Trump is hinting he might do what many fear
This ordinarily would be seen as a very big deal. Ever since
Nixon, presidents have been reluctant to be seen as pressuring the Fed. In
fact, their concern on this issue often seemed absurd to my view. President
Biden didn’t want his Council of Economic Advisors to even comment on interest
rate policy, as though giving a view based on the economic data would be undue
pressure.
But there is a big difference between presenting an economic
argument and threatening to imprison a Fed chair who disagrees. And we now see
which side Trump comes down on.
But apparently, the markets are just fine with this new
threat. The major stock indexes all rose on Monday, although bond prices fell
slightly, pushing long-term rates higher. The dollar also fell modestly.
The non-reaction of the stock markets might seem surprising. After all, the independent Fed is considered a sacred feature of US prosperity. There is no shortage of economists who will insist that a Fed that is subordinate to the whims of a president is quick route to double-digit or even triple digit inflation. (I’m more agnostic on this one, but the markets generally don’t listen to me.)
Anyhow, Trump is now not just looking to fire an
insubordinate Fed chair, he’s looking to throw him in prison. And the markets
just yawned.
This reaction should cause us to start asking how the
markets might react if Trump just cancels or outright steals the 2026 elections
in order to keep his lackeys in control of Congress. Under any other modern
president, the fear of a cancelled or stolen election would be silly. While
they might have used dubious tactics leading up to an election, we could be
comfortable that the votes would be counted, and the outcome would be binding.
(Florida in 2000 is a major exception.) No one ever suggested that an election
would be cancelled.
But Trump has made it clear that he considers both
cancellation and ordering that some votes not be counted as serious options in
his recent New
York Times interview. No one can be safe in assuming that we will have
a normal democratic election this year.
Given this reality, we might want to speculate on how the
markets would react in the event that Trump does decide to end American democracy. We now know
that most of the big money boys couldn’t care less about democracy. Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg,
and Tim Cook have been happy to cozy up to Trump in Mar-a-Lago, even as he
violates one democratic norm after another. Elon Musk has made
it clear that he has contempt for democracy, insofar as it means allowing
non-white people to vote.
This gang would obviously have no moral issues with a
cancelled or stolen election. But what about the economics?
Trump has already made it clear that he will favor
businesses whose leaders praise him and punish those who criticize him. His
most recent effort in this direction was saying that he intended to ban ExxonMobil from
access to Venezuelan oil because
its CEO said what every oil analyst has said since Trump became president of
that country: it will be difficult for companies to profitably invest there.
The economies of countries where the leader can reward or
punish companies on a whim tend to not do very well. The courts have provided a
limited check on Trump’s whims as has even this pathetic Congress. However, if
Trump is deciding who serves in Congress, the checks will be gone. We will have
full-rule by our demented 79-year-old president.
Perhaps markets will be fine with that. With enough rear-end
licking some companies may still do fine, but it would seem on the straight
economics most people with money would probably prefer to invest in a serious
country. Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.
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Dean Baker is the co-founder and the senior economist of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of several books, including "Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better bargain for Working People," "The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive," "The United States Since 1980," "Social Security: The Phony Crisis" (with Mark Weisbrot), and "The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer." He also has a blog, "Beat the Press," where he discusses the media's coverage of economic issues.