Increasing deficits and tariffs would push consumer prices up far more than the policies enacted by the Biden administration.

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The RNC Platform Would Make Inflation Worse
By Ben Ritz
PPI's Vice President of Policy Development
For Forbes ([link removed])

The theme of the Republican National Convention’s opening night in Milwaukee was “Make America Wealthy Again.” Speakers one after the other blamed ([link removed]) the Biden administration and Democratic policies for the high inflation rates that plagued the country for much of the last three years. But at the same time, delegates approved a new party platform ([link removed]) crafted by former President Donald Trump that would actually make inflation worse.

The primary mechanism by which the president can worsen inflation is by adding to the federal budget deficit ([link removed]) : if the federal government pumps more money into the economy through spending than it removes in taxes, those extra dollars help bid up the prices of goods and services. And on this measure, Republicans could make a decent argument: policies enacted under the Biden administration added more than $4 trillion to deficits over the 10-year window conventionally used for fiscal estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.

The problem here is that Donald Trump added more than $8 trillion to 10-year deficits during his first term — nearly twice as much as President Biden did, according to the non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget ([link removed]) . And if one excludes the impact of one-time spending enacted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the debt created by the Trump administration was four times what the Biden administration created. Many of these policies are still in effect today. In fact, the policies enacted by the Trump administration are responsible for about one-quarter of this year’s $2 trillion budget deficit, while policies enacted by the Biden administration are only responsible for one-fifth.
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Trump’s Tariffs Could Mirror Hoover’s Depression-era Results
By Ed Gresser
PPI VP & Director for Trade and Global Markets
For The Hill ([link removed])

As the Republican Convention continues this week ([link removed]) , candidate Donald Trump’s ([link removed]) ideas for a second-term trade policy look remarkably similar to those of his long-gone but never-quite-forgotten Republican predecessor: Herbert Hoover.

Hoover’s 1928 program ([link removed]) — a higher tariff across the board — is the obvious ancestor of Trump’s proposed 2024 program ([link removed]) of 10 percent tariffs on goods from all countries and 60 percent on Chinese-made products. This would mean a national rate of around 12.5 percent, the highest U.S. tariff since the late 1930s ([link removed]) .

Would a Trump tariff in 2025 bring the same results Hoover’s Smoot-Hawley Act ([link removed]) got then?

Depression-like policies don’t always bring Depression-like results. But recent experience at home and abroad, analysis from across the political spectrum and constitutional rules for trade policy give us four things to expect: higher inflation, lower growth, more taxation of working families and less of investors, and perhaps (depending on how a hypothetical Trump administration implements its program) a constitutional crisis verging on taxation without representation.
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