Rupert Murdoch’s editorial writing team at the Wall Street Journal says America’s gold decor-loving, cash-carrying billionaire president doesn’t understand how money actually works.
On Tuesday, U.S. consumer price inflation unexpectedly rose to 3 percent, prompting an excitable post from Donald Trump on his social media platform Truth Social saying that interest rates should be lowered and that this would go “hand in hand with upcoming Tariffs!!!”
“Does President Trump understand money? ... the answer would appear to be no,” the WSJ editorial board replied, going on to explain why doing such a thing might cause inflation to soar—and Trump’s approval ratings to plunge.
“Perhaps the president wants the public to look elsewhere when assigning blame for rising prices,” it said.
Under the headline “Trumponomics and Rising Inflation,” the WSJ team went on to systematically dismantle Trump’s mental abilities. “The layers of intellectual confusion here are hard to parse,” it wrote, before reluctantly going on to try and parse them anyway.
“Rising inflation means the Fed must be more cautious in cutting rates,” it said, in a similar tone to that you might find in an eighth grade economics class.
“He has the analysis backward,” they continued, “if he’s trying to blame the Federal Reserve.”
“Someone should tell him,” about what was actually to blame for the potential for a pause in rate cuts (the Fed’s “premature” half percentage point cut in September, apparently.)
Trump has previously signaled that he would like to assert control over the independent Federal Reserve, telling Bloomberg in July 2024 that he wouldn’t fire Fed chair Jerome Powell, “especially if I thought he was doing the right thing.”
“The Powell Fed is likely to ignore Mr. Trump, and well it should,” it said.
Despite the patronising tone, the article makes it clear that the Journal is on Trump’s side and wants him to succeed.
It says he’s not responsible for price rises since he’s only been in office for three weeks, and warns that failing to get inflation under control was one of the main reasons why President Joe Biden lost the election.
“The last thing Mr. Trump should be doing now is demanding that Mr. Powell cut rates further,” it says, because “an inflation revival may be the biggest threat to the Trump presidency.”
“Real average earnings are flat over the last three months,” it says.
“If this persists, Mr. Trump won’t have a 53% job approval rating for long.”
