CHINA/ECONOMY/ELECTION/FEDERAL RESERVE/ TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump is firing up his economic Wayback Machine in an effort to boost markets, the economy and his own political fortunes heading into his reelection campaign. Economists warn that Trump’s approach, with its roots in 19th century mercantilism and 1980s Reaganism, risks back-firing on him in potentially significant ways. In the span of just a few days, the president dusted off economic approaches largely discarded in recent decades, from promoting explicit currency wars to bullying the head of the Federal Reserve to promising to restore American manufacturing greatness by slapping ever-escalating tariffs on Chinese imports — and promising supporters everything will be fine if he doesn’t cut a deal. On Wednesday [6-19-19], he also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Art Laffer, a conservative economist and godfather of the supply-side economics approach of the 1980s who recently argued that President Barack Obama caused the Great Recession and popularized the idea that sweeping tax cuts would pay for themselves, which they have mostly failed to do.”
–Ben White, “Trump revs up his Wayback Machine,” Politico, June 20, 2019 5:15 am