Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Trump: Tariffs on China get bad rap
Failing companies ‘badly run and weak,’ the president says
President says “badly run and weak companies” are incorrectly blaming him for an economic slowdown.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Friday that “badly run and weak companies” are blaming him, not their own “bad management,” for an economic slowdown even as he continued to attack the Federal Reserve, telegraphing his growing unease about the economy and strenuously trying to avoid any blame attached to his trade policies.
“If the Fed would cut, we would have one of the biggest Stock Market increases in a long time,” Trump tweeted. “Badly run and weak companies are smartly blaming these small Tariffs instead of themselves for bad management ... and who can really blame them for doing that? Excuses!”
The president canceled a weekend trip to Poland to monitor Hurricane Dorian, which threatens his numerous properties in Florida. But he remains preoccupied with the possibility of an economic slowdown or a recession appearing on the horizon as he’s heading into a reelection campaign.
Friday’s comments continued a stretch of days in which Trump has been on Twitter — sending out missives about the economy, defending his trade war with China and criticizing the Federal Reserve for not taking more dramatic action to stimulate the economy.
“We don’t have a Tariff problem (we are reigning in bad and/or unfair players), we have a Fed problem,” Trump tweeted. “They don’t have a clue!”
Behind closed doors at the White House, Trump and aides have engaged in several conversations this week about what action they might take on the economy, according to multiple aides.
“There’s real frustration and some concern, obviously, about what could happen if this goes the wrong way,” said one senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“And there’s a sense that we have to message on this hard because the media is going to focus on any bit of bad news.”
Earlier this week, a new poll showed, for the first time in Trump’s presidency, that more Americans believe the economy is getting worse, 37%, than better, 31%.
The same Quinnipiac University survey showed Trump losing by substantial margins to all five of the top-polling Democratic presidential candidates.
The president’s messages this week have amounted to a mix of blame-shifting and cheerleading to convince the public the economy is still booming and that a deal with China is within reach. Both fly against facts to the contrary: The unemployment rate remains low, but job growth has slowed, and there’s no evidence that the Chinese are ready to accept Trump’s terms for resolving the trade conflict.
Two of Trump’s tweets Friday suggested that he may be reconsidering an idea he seemed to rule out just days ago: indexing capital gains. He retweeted a tweet from the Club for Growth, a conservative group, which urged that. And he quoted a similarly encouraging tweet from Steve Forbes, asking: “An idea liked by many?”
Trump has gone back and forth over the last 10 days on indexing capital gains taxes to the inflation rate, which could reduce the taxes that investors pay on profits from the sale of stock or other assets. Some legal experts believe the administration could change the rules on indexing by regulation, bypassing Congress, but others dispute that.
Last week , he said he was considering the idea. The next day he told reporters it was probably off the table, noting that almost all the tax benefits of indexing would go to the wealthy.
While Trump’s flip-flop adds to the uncertainty affecting markets, one effort aimed at settling them has now been revealed to have been based on a falsehood.
After ratcheting up tensions with China a week ago before traveling to France for the Group of Seven summit, a move that caused markets to tumble, Trump told reporters Sunday morning that he’d spoken overnight with Chinese officials who were suddenly interested in resolving the monthslong trade dispute.
When reporters pressed for more specifics after a spokesman for China’s foreign minister said Beijing was unaware of such a phone call, Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin wouldn’t say whom they had spoken to, but insisted that “communication” had taken place “at the highest level.”
Two administration sources later conceded privately that there had not been such a call.
The president, looking to stem a stock market slide, was basing his claims on a public statement from China’s Vice Premier Liu He that Trump took as a positive sign, they said.