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'Trump Clearly Has No Idea What He's Doing When It Comes to the Economy': Janine Jackson ([link removed])


Janine Jackson interviewed CEPR's Dean Baker about Donald Trump's economic nonsense for the October 31, 2025, episode ([link removed]) of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

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Donald Trump making false economic assertions on Truth Social

Truth Social (4/7/25 ([link removed]) )

Janine Jackson: It's long been clear to observers that corporate journalists have their own rules, which, push come to shove, seem to be grounded more solidly in the “corporate” part than the “journalism” part, with tacit reference to notions of objectivity ([link removed]) and balance ([link removed]) that never stood up to much examination, but are a useful excuse for platforming absurd and/or hateful ideas.

But what, or who, is harmed when corporate news media coddle Donald Trump by presenting his weird, all-caps blatherings as ideas that deserve respectful consideration as ideas, and not just as the blurtings of a sawdust Caesar? There's a price to pretending the emperor has clothes, and it isn't paid by the emperor.

Dean Baker is co-founder and senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research ([link removed]) , where Beat the Press ([link removed]) , his commentary on economic reporting, appears. He's the author of, among other titles, Rigged: ([link removed]) How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer. He joins us now by phone from Oregon. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Dean Baker.

Dean Baker: Thanks, Janine. Thanks for having me on.
CEPR: Trumponomics: The Economics of Crazy

Beat the Press (10/27/25 ([link removed]) )

JJ: Well, we know that Trump has a lot of fakakta ideas. When it comes to economics, there are some baseline--I feel like “fallacies" almost honors them too much, but there are some ideas that seem to be at work. What is the thrust of this piece that you just wrote, “The Economics of Crazy” ([link removed]) ? What do you think is important to say right now, not necessarily to MAGA, but to the rest of us?

DB: Well, Trump clearly has no idea what he's doing when it comes to the economy. I mean, that might be true more generally, but I'm an economist; I could speak very well to what he says about the economy, and it literally makes no sense. He routinely says things that are absurd, impossible.

One of the ones, just because he repeats it again ([link removed]) over months, is that he says he's going to get drug prices down by 800, 900, even 1,500%, and he usefully throws in that ‘no one thought it was possible,’--which is true. Just in case other people are confused here, you can't reduce drug prices by more than a 100% unless you envision them paying people to use their drugs. So he's saying something literally absurd, and he's repeated it again and again and again, which both means confusion on his part, and also that apparently none of his aides has the courage to say, “Mr. Trump, that's not how percents work.”

So that's just one very clear example, but it happens all the time. He keeps raising the number ([link removed]) that we're bringing in, I think we're up to $20 trillion now, and I'm sure no one has any idea what he’s talking about; that's two-thirds of a year's GDP. I don't know where he could possibly think that's coming from, or why, or how, but he just uses this number, and he says it again.

Anyhow, my point: He literally does not make any sense, but he's treated like he's got an economic agenda that he's trying to carry through, and maybe it’ll work, maybe it won't. Well, there is nothing there. This is literally crazy.

JJ: I think what people think, when they're being smart, “Well, there's puppeteers behind the scenes and they're getting him to say (because obviously he doesn't know what he's saying) but they're getting him to enact their agenda.” But if that's an agenda, it's not itself coherent, really.
Dean Baker (image: BillMoyers.com)

Dean Baker: "There are people around him who want favors, want money, and they're getting it.... He knows how to take bribes, basically." (image: BillMoyers.com ([link removed]) )

DB: Yeah, I think there's two things worth distinguishing. There are people around him who want favors, want money, and they're getting it. So he gives someone a big break on a tariff. He grants a merger that shouldn't go through. There's all sorts of things like that that you could point to that he has been doing, and will presumably continue to do. So those people have his ear, and he will grant them favors that will give them lots of money. That's not particularly a coherent agenda; that's just someone coming up to him, giving him a big contribution, whatever it might be, giving him a cut, whatever it is. And he knows how to take bribes ([link removed]) , basically.

But the second issue is, is there actually something that makes sense as economic policy here? And it's just absurd to pretend there is, because, again, whatever you might say he's trying to do, he contradicts it again and again.

I'll just mention again, another example I had in the piece, that he wants to reindustrialize America. That's fine, you can make an argument for it. But he wants to do it with tariffs. OK, so figure out which industries you want to promote, this is what Biden did. I mean, not the exact same program, but he wanted to promote clean energy, he wanted to promote production on his computer chips. So he puts tariffs ([link removed]) on those industries, has subsidies, incentives, etc.

Trump, saying, “OK, I want to promote industry.” So he wants to promote the auto industry, shipbuilding. What’s he do? He has a 50% tariff on imported steel ([link removed]) . How does that help the auto industry?

So, again, I just mention that, but you could find any number of examples that whatever policy you say he is trying to pursue, he does policies that are 180 degrees at odds, just totally thwarting it. So someone looking for a coherent policy, they're looking for something that's not there.
Trump: Trump: Tariffs are making us rich again. Richer than anybody ever thought was possible. And the only one challenging them are people that hate our country or foreign countries that are paying a price

C-SPAN (9/21/25 ([link removed]) )

JJ: And with tariffs in particular, I've been surprised, because it wasn't a topic I knew anything about. I think it was something that a lot of folks didn't really understand how tariffs worked, and our introduction to how they worked was Trump saying ([link removed]) , ‘They're going to pay us. We're going to get rich off these tariffs.’ And then journalists saying, ‘That's not quite how they work.’ It's not exactly a robust debate, but there is an understanding of how tariffs work, and it's just not the way that Trump says they do.

DB: Yeah, again, I can't speak to what's in his head, but he talks about it ([link removed]) like he has countries sending us checks. So he says, “Oh, I put a big tariff on Canada, and that's going to punish them. And I put a big tariff on India, and that's going to….”

Well, the tariff isn't on India. It's a tax we pay on the imports we buy from India, so we're paying the tariff. It can hurt India, to be clear, if you put a tax, we'll buy less of their stuff, so it could hurt them, but we're the ones paying it. So when he goes around boasting ([link removed]) , “Oh, we got way more money from tariffs than anyone thought,” A, that's not true, but that's our money. He's just boasting that he gave us a really big tax increase. Politicians usually don't like to do that.

JJ: We would understand it better if journalists would piece it out a little bit better. And I just feel that news media are working against clarity. I mean, whatever policy prescription you might believe in, they're working against our understanding of it when they talk about Trump, and don't talk about the policy itself. It's one thing to say, “Oh, he's weird. I wonder where he's getting his ideas from.” But we have to be onto the structures and the systems that are allowing him to do what he's doing. Otherwise, how do we know what not to do in the future, if it's a policy that just doesn't happen to be attached to the name Donald Trump?
Raw Story: Trump Cabinet member Scott Bessent snaps at reporter: 'Tariffs are a surcharge, not a tax'

Raw Story (10/15/25 ([link removed]) )

DB: Yeah, it would be so helpful. I mean, something as simple, when they say Trump is imposing a tariff on China, it would be very helpful if they just said something as simple as he's putting a tax, or if you like, tariff on imports from China, just so that people understand what the tax is. Because a lot of people don't know what a tariff is. I don't blame people, they aren't economists, but I think a lot of people think it's something other than a tax.

In fact, Trump's administration has tried to encourage that. [Treasury Secretary Scott] Bessent was on some show ([link removed]) , he’s probably done it more than once, and he got very angry. He goes, “A tariff is not a tax.” I'm sorry. It's the definition ([link removed]) . It is a tax. And in fact, it was the United States, when it was first formed, tariffs were the largest tax. So there's really not an ambiguity there. It is a tax.

JJ: And that's where I get so mad at news media, because telling the truth about whether tariffs are taxes is not a partisan issue. Why are you mad that somebody in the White House is going to be mad at you if you say what the dictionary says a tariff is? I feel that news media are letting us down in a way that is so deeply fundamental, in terms of just our understanding of these issues that affect all of our lives.

DB: Yeah, it is very frustrating. Of course, we all were alive through the Biden years, where everything he said was scrutinized and often torn to pieces. I remember, I don’t know how many times I saw pieces complaining ([link removed]) about Biden being tone deaf when he would tout some positive development in the economy, which, in almost all cases, was true. I mean, not to say the guy didn't exaggerate, politicians do that. But if he were to say, ‘Oh, we've had very strong real wage growth, wages growing faster than inflation at the bottom end of the income distribution,’ it's a 100% true thing. If he were to say that, he would be attacked for being tone deaf, but that was a true statement.
CNN: Trump just said he solved inflation. But prices are rising - in part because of his policies

CNN (9/12/25 ([link removed]) )

Instead, you have Trump saying ([link removed]) things like, “Prices are falling, inflation has been licked.” These are just absurd statements. Inflation's actually up ([link removed]) , and almost no prices are falling. So this is just flat-out absurdity. So you get Biden being attacked for saying things that are true, and Trump, it's just sort of, “Well, that's Trump,” when he says things that are just totally absurd.

JJ: And that's my concern, is that if we don't separate Trump from these policy ideas, we're not learning anything. We're going through this horrible time, and we're not actually learning anything from it, except, “Ooh Trump, he's a weirdo, he's a creep ([link removed]) .” That's not enough of a takeaway for me.

DB: Yeah, I would hope we can get better reporting, I mean, I’m not going to say it's all bad, but a lot of these things are fairly straightforward, and when Trump says something that’s just absurd, it would be helpful to not just reprint it, but to point out it's absurd. There’s no way drug prices could fall 1,500%. So that, literally, is just absurd.

JJ: Exactly. And mention it every time you mention it, not just the one time he said a funny thing, but every time you talk about him on drug prices, you should note that he doesn't know what he's talking about.

But I want to pivot you for the last question. It's not really a pivot, because it's all intertwined, but when we talked last ([link removed]) , Trump was just about to come into office, and he was threatening to declare trade wars against China, as well as Mexico and Canada. And you were saying at the time that ignoring deals that the US has made with other countries, including deals that Trump himself had made, is going to make the US, let's say it, a less appealing trade partner.

And you've been talking for a long time ([link removed]) about how, given the size of China's economy, the size of its research efforts, it makes a lot more sense to maintain access to China's technology, rather than cutting the US off.

I just wonder, finally, now that Trump has basically declared a trade war on the whole world, they're moving to increase trade among themselves at the expense, if you will, of the US. And so the US is losing out, in fact, by trying to wall off tech, in particular, from the “Chinese menace.”
AP: Canada will double its non-US exports in a decade, PM Carney says

AP (via Politico, 10/23/25 ([link removed]) )

DB: Yeah. Well, that certainly seems to be the case. In fact, Trump, I don't know if, whatever you want to say, but they don't have a written trade deal, at least not to my knowledge. But they did have some agreement after the meeting Trump had with Xi yesterday. And Trump seems to have backed away ([link removed]) from his efforts to try and punish China with high tariffs, and then also restricting exports of computer chips.

And the rest of the world, exactly as you were saying, the rest of the world is looking to trade more with each other, Canada very explicitly ([link removed]) . I mean, what else could they do? Trump's making all sorts of absurd threats, threatening to take over the country, literally. So naturally they're looking to have stronger trade relations with Latin America, with Europe, with China, Japan, Korea.

And the same is true with all the other countries; Korea, Japan and China are looking to have closer trade ties ([link removed]) . We are seeing that, because they realize the United States under Trump is not a reliable trading partner. So no one wants to be in a position where they're in effect subject to his whims.

JJ: And news media, in their Trump-centered reporting, are kind of like, “Trump's trying to win. He's trying to show power.” But for all of us who are not the elephants but the grass, this is not happy news for us.
CNN: Trump announces 130% tariffs on China. The global trade war just came roaring back

CNN (10/10/25 ([link removed]) )

DB: He's always backed down, and maybe that's a good thing. Maybe he'll continue to, in the face of the situation, but when he starts talking about tariffs of over 100% on China, which he has repeatedly ([link removed]) , that's almost an embargo. And we still buy a lot of stuff from China. So if we got to a situation where trade slowed to a crawl, we'd see a lot of stuff that we're used to getting at low prices there, they would only be available at a much higher price, or in many cases not available at all. So people wouldn't like that story. And again, thankfully he's backed down, again and again and again. But wherever you see tariffs of the size he was talking about against China, or for that matter any other country, we would see the effects.

JJ: Any final thoughts, Dean Baker, about more responsible reporting on Donald Trump's economic “policies”?

DB: I'd like to just see some simple things, just being clear that tariffs are a tax on us, and when Trump says things that are just blatantly not true, that should be pointed out. I mean, the reporters, I think, for the most part know that when you start saying prices are falling, which is clearly not true, and sometimes they do point out, but again, that should just be the norm.

We might know this, pPeople who are careful readers, obviously economists. But a lot of the people, who are very casual readers, they pick up the paper, they see, “Trump says prices are falling.” They might think that's true, because it's a rather blatant lie that most people-- again, politicians all exaggerate, take that as a given – but they usually don't try and tell you, “Night is day, up is down,” and that's what Trump's doing. And they should point that out, because people need to know that.

JJ: All right, then. We've been speaking with economist Dean Baker. His column, Beat the Press ([link removed]) , appears on CEPR.net ([link removed]) . Thank you so much, Dean Baker, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

DB: Thanks for having me on.
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