As the saying goes: Even a stopped clock is right twice a day — unless that stopped clock is New York Times Nobel Laureate economist, columnist and “never Trumper” Paul Krugman.
National Review senior writer and economist David Harsanyi took a turn dismantling Krugman in a recent op-ed called “Paul Krugman: Always Wrong, Never in Doubt,” which drew the praise of President Donald Trump via Twitter.
Paul Krugman has called me wrong from day one. People at the Failing New York Times are very angry at him for having “missed” by soooo much. Paul, match over! https://t.co/5kspoUPhIX
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 17, 2019
Paul Krugman of @nytimes has been wrong about me from the very beginning. Anyone who has followed his “words of wisdom” has lost a great deal of money. Paul, just concede the game, say I was right, and lets start a brand new game! https://t.co/O6bw61vcHL
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 17, 2019
So what exactly has Krugman been wrong about in regard to Trump? Well, in a word, everything, Harsanyi argues.
Krugman first warned of an impending global recession “with no end in sight,” shortly after Trump was elected in 2016, which may have been his worst prediction ever.
“We could file that under ‘post-election hysteria,’ but as late as April of this year he was still telling crowds that the bond-market signals predicted ‘a pretty good chance of a recession sometime in the next year or so,'” Harsanyi wrote.
And Krugman has kept the doomsaying going all year:
Of course, as Harsanyi points out, just a couple of weeks after the “Trump boom expired,” CNBC reported that the October jobs report came in a 128,000 — even with the GM/UAW strike.
At some point, Harsanyi writes, Krugman will be right because recessions are inevitable in a capitalist system that has boom and bust phases.
“In the past 60 years the United States has been hit with recessions in 1960–61, 1969–70, 1973–75, 1980, 1981–82, 1990–91, 2001, and 2007–09. History says we’re probably due for another one soon,” Harsanyi wrote. “When it hits, Krugman will blame tax cuts, unfettered capitalist greed, a dearth of regulations — and maybe climate change, or whatever hobbyhorse he’s riding at the time. MSNBC hosts will hail him as a seer.
“Much like most economists, I have no clue what the future holds. But I do know that Barack Obama, who oversaw the slowest recovery in American history, was constantly being given credit for averting disaster by adopting smart policies (read: spending). Years after the bailouts — which is to say years of D.C. gridlock in which the former president, by his own admission, couldn’t enact any of his preferred economic policies — Democrats were still claiming that short-term first-year spending fixes were the impetus for growth.”
Or, more likely, Washington stopped helping.
But while Trump constantly takes a victory lap on the state of the economy, Harsanyi notes that presidents play a far smaller part in economic growth than most people think.
“But Trump-era job creation was a far tougher task, since he was operating with less room for job growth than his predecessor. And considering the (self-inflicted) trade wars, political turmoil, and foreign-policy concerns that have dominated much of his first term, conventional wisdom tells us we should be struggling. Yet it’s clear that we’ve had a pretty resilient economy.
“What has Trump done? The two things Paul Krugman hates most: Regulatory rollbacks and tax cuts. And yet here we are.”