Trump’s Latest Economic Proposal is the R-Word

The President Risks Provoking Inflation

At this point, it is not in dispute that one of the contributing factors to inflation after COVID was the government stimulus checks. Trump and Biden both sent stimulus checks to Americans and multiple studies and a deep analysis by the Federal Reserve investigating the causes of the post-COVID inflation all found the stimulus checks were one of the reasons for the inflation — contributing about 2% of the 9% inflation rate.

Now, President Trump wants to send American families $2000.00 checks as tariff rebates. The federal government has taken money out of the economy in the form of tariffs, while causing prices to go up due to the tariffs, and will now dump billions of dollars back into the economy concurrent to Federal Reserve interest rate cuts also speeding the flow of money into the economy. This is not a wise idea. It also comes the same week that the President’s Solicitor General told the Supreme Court that the tariffs were not significant revenue generators.

On top of that, the President is now proposing a fifty year mortgage, touting it as the first improvement in mortgage lending since Franklin D. Roosevelt pioneered the thirty year mortgage. Tying yourself to FDR, whose economic policies prolonged the Great Depression, is not a good move.

Home ownership has been, over time, the greatest way for the middle class to accumulate wealth they can transfer to future generations. A fifty year mortgage would, more likely than not, transfer debt to future generations instead of wealth. Likewise, the monthly payment from a thirty year to a fifty year mortgage is actually not that significant, but the amount of interest paid over time is. On a $300,000.00 house, the difference in monthly payment would only be about $163.00, but the total interest paid over time to the bank would be significant. The odds would also be very good that a home is never actually paid for so a family never actually generates intergenerational wealth. The only winners here are the bankers.

These are not good ideas, but the President’s core supporters will either insist they are or stay silent and bully anyone who points out how bad these ideas are. Tribal loyalty will run us off the cliff.

After the last five years, we should have learned that stimulus checks stimulate inflation. And if the economy is as good as Republicans say it is, we should need no revisions to mortgages and no stimulus checks.

Instead of adopting the Democrats’ playbook of denying the problems and insisting all is well, maybe the GOP should actually work on fixing the economy. That would, however, require them to reject their new economic orthodoxy, which is the orthodoxy of Democrats from the 1950’s.

Additionally, Democrats will, this week, reopen the government, having gotten not much of anything. They could have done this over a month ago. Republicans should be focused on pointing out Democrats got nothing and caved. Instead, they’ll have to deal with the President’s resurrection of big government economic policies that failed in the fifties.

Lastly, Tucker Carlson had on a man this week who insisted there is no extermination effort of Christians in Nigeria. Turns out the “expert” has been on the payroll of a Nigeria Islamic leader tied to the very same militias exterminating the Christians. To my Christian friends who have insisted Tucker Carlson is a valuable part of the rightwing coalition, he is not. You should move on from him.