Nearly one year since returning to the White House, President Trump has come to embrace a risky economic strategy: using the brute force of government as a way to push down prices that remain stubbornly high.
From regulatory threats against private businesses to more punitive actions against policymakers, there appears to be no lever in Washington that Mr. Trump now seems unwilling to pull, even if doing so might exacerbate some of the very economic strains that he is trying to combat.
The extent of Mr. Trump’s interventions have become especially evident over the past month.
He has unleashed a new barrage of attacks on the Federal Reserve, and his administration has opened an investigation into its chair, ostensibly in a bid to force the central bank into lowering interest rates rapidly.
He has similarly taken aim at a vast array of companies and industries — defense contractors, oil giants, big banks and real estate investors, to name a few — whose practices he dislikes or believes to be at odds with his political goals.
Mr. Trump, who unfurled some of his thinking in a rambling speech on Tuesday in Detroit, has cast many of these moves as an extension of his electoral mandate. He insists he is acting in service of an agenda meant to reduce regulation, cut taxes, reorient global trade and stimulate an economic boom for a nation still grappling with high prices and other aftershocks from the pandemic.
But policymakers and economists — even those who support Mr. Trump — increasingly regard his actions as unpredictable and fraught with risk. They see his reliance on punishment and intimidation as a challenge to the very foundation that has made the United States such an enviable economy in the eyes of much of the world.
Glenn Hubbard, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the George W. Bush administration, said the recent gyrations in policy had contributed to a great sense of uncertainty, particularly for American businesses.
“At a practical level,” he added, “it may backfire.”
Mr. Hubbard pointed to the example of the Fed, which has opted to lower interest rates gradually in recent months out of a concern that steep, swift reductions could worsen inflation. The careful pace has angered Mr. Trump, under whom the Justice Department has now opened an investigation into the central bank. The Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, has described that inquiry as political retribution.
Mr. Trump seeks lower rates in the hopes that it will help to make mortgages more attractive, stimulating the housing market. But, if his frequent attacks and new investigation compromise the Fed and its political independence, it could instead result in a spike in government bonds, which Mr. Hubbard described as the opposite of what the president seeks.
And yet, the president kept up the attack on Tuesday. On social media, he renewed his demands for lower interest rates before redoubling his attack on Mr. Powell, whom he called a “jerk” in his speech.
Mr. Trump is hardly unique in seeking to wield the reach and influence of the Oval Office to accomplish his agenda. But he differs from his predecessors in embracing such an expansive view of presidential power, which he has wielded already in a bid to remake the ranks of government, deport millions of Americans and conduct military operations, often without congressional approval.
Mr. Trump has applied that same approach to matters of the economy, evident in his punishing global tariffs, the legality of which the Supreme Court is now weighing. And he has frequently reached directly into private enterprise to accomplish his political objectives.
Within months of taking office, he intervened in the U.S. Steel merger, snapped up a stake in the chipmaker Intel and other firms and bashed Walmart and others for their pricing practices — an approach that has put him at odds with conservatives, who historically prefer a more hands-off approach to the economy.
“It’s not what would be the historical attitude of a Republican president. But that shouldn’t surprise anyone,” said Wilbur Ross, who served as secretary of commerce during the president’s first term.
Mr. Ross said that Mr. Trump’s strategy reflected, in part, a determination “to make the economy grow faster,” adding: “And if he can do it by jawboning, that’s fine.”
Mr. Trump has amplified those verbal lashings and other threats as polls increasingly show an electorate frustrated with the rising cost of living. The latest gauge on inflation, released Tuesday, showed that prices grew 2.7 percent in December compared with the same period a year ago.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump maintained that prices are “way, way, down,” including for groceries, even though those costs rose sharply last month. And he described affordability as a “fake word,” while still promising “more plans” to address it, including an unspecified set of policies targeting health care.
In recent days, Mr. Trump has also attacked credit card companies, demanding that they lower their fees; he has promised to clamp down on investing giants like Blackstone, arguing they drive up housing costs by buying single-family homes; and he has promised to drag health insurance executives to Washington to press them on their companies’ premium costs. But the president has not released full details of any of these plans, much less enacted them.
Unrelated to the immediate goal of affordability, Mr. Trump this month also lashed out at defense giants, including Raytheon, for exceeding contracting costs, and took aim at their pay packages and stock buybacks. And he suggested he could block ExxonMobil from Venezuela, where the United States recently ousted the country’s leader because the oil giant had been “too cute” in its airing reservations about doing business in the nation.
“Part of President Trump’s enduring support from the American people is that he’s a master dealmaker who’s willing to smash Washington, D.C.’s broken orthodoxy to deliver real results,” Kush Desai, a spokesman for the White House, said in a statement. He pointed to the president’s recent effort to push drugmakers to lower medicine costs.
To be sure, some of Mr. Trump’s actions address problems that have been raised by both Republicans and Democrats, including the increasing price of homes, health insurance and credit cards. At times, the president’s interests have even put him on the same side of an issue as Democrats, including Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Mr. Trump and Ms. Warren are hardly allies in any sense of the word. But the two had a rare phone call on Monday, sometime after the senator delivered a speech criticizing the president for his economic agenda. They discussed a range of issues, including housing costs and credit card fees, according to Ms. Warren’s office.
Still, Democratic policymakers have taken issue with the fact that the president has tried to achieve most of his policy goals through threats and attacks, not a meaningful dialogue on policy with Congress — resulting in a patchwork of actions that risk unintended consequences.
“If you were interested, let’s say, in affordability, and you wanted to have lower credit card costs, is this the way to do it?” asked Mr. Hubbard, noting that Mr. Trump’s demand to cap credit card fees at 10 percent could just as easily harm the ability of those companies to offer credit to a wide range of customers.
“Part of it is stepping back and asking, What are the goals of policy?” he continued. “What’s the easiest way to accomplish that?”
Heather Boushey, who served on the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said that Mr. Trump’s actions had also left some businesses feeling uncomfortable. But she said many had remained silent anyway, having developed a sense that “we’ll work it out on the other side” and that the president’s most severe threats won’t come to pass.
Ms. Boushey said that had been especially evident this week, as Mr. Trump took fresh aim at the Fed, which executives and financial markets quickly brushed off in a presumption that it would “be OK in the end.”
“Institutions don’t hold up that way forever,” she added. “I worry a lot about what the tipping point is.”
Tony Romm is a reporter covering economic policy and the Trump administration for The Times, based in Washington.
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