https://apnews.com/article/trump-inflation-tariffs-taxes-immigration-federal-reserve-a18de763fcc01557258c7f33cab375edWASHINGTON (AP) — With characteristic bravado, Donald Trump has vowed that if voters return him to the White House, “inflation will vanish completely.”
It’s a message tailored for Americans who are still exasperated by the jump in consumer prices that began 3 1/2 years ago.
Yet most mainstream economists say Trump’s policy proposals wouldn’t vanquish inflation. They’d make it worse. They warn that his plans to impose huge tariffs on imported goods, deport millions of migrant workers and demand a voice in the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policies would likely send prices surging.
Sixteen Nobel Prize-winning economists signed a letter in June expressing fear that Trump’s proposals would “reignite’’ inflation, which has plummeted since peaking at 9.1% in 2022 and is nearly back to the Fed’s 2% target.
The Nobel economists noted that they aren’t alone in sounding the alarm.
“Nonpartisan researchers,” they said, “predict that if Donald Trump successfully enacts his agenda, it will increase inflation.”
Last month, the Peterson Institute for International Economics predicted that Trump’s policies — the deportations, import taxes and efforts to erode the Fed’s independence — would drive consumer prices sharply higher two years into his second term. Peterson’s analysis concluded that inflation, which would otherwise register 1.9% in 2026, would instead jump to between 6% and 9.3% if Trump’s economic proposals were adopted.
Many economists aren’t thrilled with Vice President Kamala Harris’ economic agenda, either. They dismiss, for example, her proposal to combat price gouging as an ineffective tool against high grocery prices. But they don’t regard her policies as particularly inflationary.
