Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers claimed Thursday on CNN’s “The Arena” that he was concerned President Donald Trump’s tariffs showed a “lack of basic competence.”
Host Kasie Hunt said, “President Trump wrote on his truth social platform, ‘The operations over the patient lived and is healing. The prognosis is the patient will be stronger, bigger, better and more resilient than ever before.’ What has your reaction been to that?”
Summers said, “It is utter and total nonsense. This action has taken $3 trillion off the stock market as a consequence of an hour of rhetoric. The stock market reflects only part of the economy so if you took the cumulative loss, extrapolating from the stock market, it’s closer to $30 trillion. That’s more damage than any economic policy pursued by any president in the last, probably in American history. There is no reason to think that this is particularly going to get better.”
He added, “I used to be worried about this administration not caring enough about the poor. I used to be worried about excesses of power on the part of this administration. I still am. But right now, my primary concern is a lack of basic competence. The economics equivalent of having attack plans be discussed on open phone lines, including journalists. There is no coherent logic to these policies. I don’t really understand how any self-respecting analyst can person who holds themselves out as an economic expert can be comfortable remaining in this administration. I’ve disagreed with administration policies in the past, but I have never seen anything remotely like this.”
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