We’d have thought the New York Times might have learned SOMETHING about how supply-side economics work after all these years. Instead, they ran with this almost comical headline on their front page over the weekend:
This reminded us of when Reagan was President and the media and Democrats hysterically warned that his tax cuts would make inflation worse.
The Washington Post predicted that the Reagan tax cuts would be “dangerously inflationary.” Paul Krugman and Larry Summers – two of the Democrats’ favorite economists – warned of a Reaganomics “inflation time bomb.” Jimmy Carter called the Reagan plan “one of the most highly inflationary ideas ever presented to the American people.”
Instead of course, we had under Reagan one of the most rapid periods of disinflation in history – from 11% before the tax cut to 4% after the tax cut.
As Larry Kudlow put it in a New York Sun article: “When marginal tax rates were slashed under JFK, Reagan, and Trump, inflation never uttered a serious peep.”
As for the claim that Trump will cause runaway inflation, The New York Times seems to have suppressed from their memory that Trump already WAS President. The inflation rate was one of the lowest of any President in modern times – while Biden’s has served up one of the highest rates in modern times. So how could a Trump victory be worse for inflation than a Biden re-election?
The Times even made up statistics and resorted to historical revisionism.
For example, The Times writes: “during the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath, prices rose much faster.”
Wrong. There were almost no price rises during the height of the pandemic and when Trump left office inflation was only 1.4%. That’s BELOW the Fed target. Prices started skyrocketing AFTER Biden was elected, not before.
The Times gets so confused in its analysis that in the very same article the authors argue that Trump’s tariffs would raise inflation, but his “deep” personal income tax cuts would also raise inflation. These people are either deeply confused about economics or they suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Or both.