Economist Paul Krugman argues that voters who cast ballots for President-elect Trump’s “terrible” economic agenda are going to get “brutally scammed.”
Krugman joined The New Republic’s “The Daily Blast” podcast for an episode that aired Tuesday, where he discussed Trump’s major economic overhaul plans, including hiking up tariffs on international trading partners and cutting taxes for some Americans.
“Trump has really radical policy ideas,” Krugman said. “I, obviously, think they’re terrible.”
Krugman, a Nobel laureate and longtime New York Times columnist, argued the U.S. economy is doing well in its postpandemic recovery, even as Americans consistently indicated they didn’t think the same.
He also argued people’s perceptions of the economy shift based on whether the president is a member of their preferred party.
“We see this immediately switch in economic sentiment among Democrats and Republicans, where Republicans now say the economy is great, Democrats now say they’re worried about inflation and the impact that could result from Trump’s policies,” Krugman said.
“We suddenly switched from a plurality of people saying they were worse off — which wasn’t true, but that’s what people felt — to a plurality saying that they’re better off, which I think is … Republicans saying, ‘Oh, now that Trump is president-elect everything is great,’” he added.
Krugman said a lot of people who voted for Trump, and small-business owners specifically, are “going to get brutally scammed” by the proposed economic plan and the current outlook on the economy.
“Small-business people are the people that he’s all through his life hired as contractors and then not paid, right?” he said. “Scamming people like that is what his whole life has been around.”
Krugman also highlighted that Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy will “effectively redistribute income” away from middle-class voters. He also noted the president-elect’s massive deportation plan will hurt the economy in large ways.
