Have you been pleasantly surprised by Donald Trump’s performance since the election?
Tim Worstall, senior fellow of the Adam Smith Institute, says Yes.
Pleasantly surprised is to put it mildly. The sight of special snowflake heads exploding in outrage all around has been hugely enjoyable.
According to them, threats to deport 3m illegal immigrants seem to be different from the 3m deported under the Obama administration. The FBI director is a saint when Hillary is said to have not acted illegally over her emails, then vilified when he says, well, just a minute now… It’s almost as if there are no objective standards, only what benefits one side.
The world hasn’t ended – and it won’t either, for the American President has a bully pulpit and little more power than that. The rough edges of policy will get knocked off by the system and the truly bad ideas on trade buried by it.
I’ve even been pleasantly surprised by the one undoubted walk back in Trump’s policy that we’ve already had. He’s to take $1 in salary rather than the $0 he said he would. That’s his first default on a campaign promise and one that I think I can manage to take in my stride.
Vicky Pryce, board member of CEBR and co-author of It’s The Economy, Stupid, Economics for Voters, says No.
Trump may have said nice things about Britain, but the first British politician he chose to meet after his win was not the Prime Minister! The list of male aides he has named so far hardly suggests social inclusiveness. His attack on Janet Yellen’s Fed’s policies are worrying in relation to central bank independence.
Of course he is now dropping the more extreme elements of his campaign rhetoric but the protectionist, anti-trade stance, also shared by Congress, remains very much in evidence and could well lead to slower world trade and economic activity in the future.
True, his massive tax cutting programme would boost the US economy, but it would hit against the deficit ceiling which may prevent it from happening. Extra infrastructure spending will also help. But the US economy will suffer from less immigration, higher consumer prices through tariff increases and less access for US firms to cost efficient global suppliers.