Who’s On Trump’s Cabinet- Part 2: Economy

Elections & Politics #138 | By: Arvind Salem | November 28, 2024

Photo from Trump Stock photos by Vecteezy

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Policy Summary:

The economy, after foreign policy, crime, and immigration, formed much of Trump’s appeals and promises during the 2024 election. As President-elect, Trump is naming the people that he is entrusting to carry out his economic vision. This brief continues the process of exploring how to hold Cabinet appointments like these accountable, using the express motivations and goals that either Trump or they themselves have set (regardless of if those goals themselves are admirable or not, although most are).

Secretary of Treasury: Scott Bessent

Bessent is a Wall-Street titan that supported Trump throughout this election cycle, mainly through fundraising. Despite his current support for Trump and history as a Republican, he has also supported Democrats in the past. He gave money to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, while hosting a fundraiser for Al Gore in 2000. Additionally, he worked for Democratic mega donor George Soros during the 1990s and was executive director of his hedge fund. Bessent is also openly gay, and, if confirmed, would be the first Senate-confirmed member of Cabinet to be gay under a Republican president. 

Bessent is a strong proponent of tariffs, a key part of Trump’s economic vision. He’ll also be involved in translating the promises Trump made into policy, including eliminating taxes on tips, overtime pay, and Social Security benefits. He’ll also be responsible for managing the after-effects of some of Trump’s policies. In particular, his tax cuts could exacerbate the federal deficits and his tariffs could exacerbate inflation (by raising the prices of imported foreign goods). Especially after criticizing the Biden administration for inflation, President Trump is extremely wary to ensure he does not lead to inflation, which is why Bessent has suggested that tariffs are phased-in so the economy could adjust to shocks. 

Bessent is positioning himself as the executioner of Trump’s anti-inflation vision, meaning that assessing him will be relatively simple. A fair benchmark for Bessent would be if he can keep the inflation rate low, without allowing the deficit to balloon, ensuring the President has the domestic economic stability to pursue is foreign policy agenda.

Secretary of Commerce: Howard Lutnick

Howard Lutnick is also a billionaire Wall Street executive, and is Trump’s appointee to head the Commerce Department: a Department that has been growing in importance. Lutnick runs financial firms that serve corporate clients that could be affected by the very regulations he is tasked with making and enforcing.

 In contrast to Bessent, who needs to deal with the effects of Trump’s tariffs, Lutnick is responsible in many ways for negotiating these tariffs.Trump has promised 60% tariffs on China as well as a 10% tariff on other countries. The Secretary of Commerce is the emissary of U.S. business to foreign governments, negotiating trade deals and attempting to secure foreign investment in U.S. businesses, placing them at the center of the President’s likely upcoming trade war with China.

Additionally, the Secretary of Commerce is responsible for overseeing technological restrictions that, beyond their economic implications, are critical for the United States’s national security.  This includes barring semiconductor exports to China, regulating artificial intelligence, and allocating subsidies to American chips manufacturers using the funds from the CHIPS Act. 

With such a large and multifaceted job, measuring success is by no means easy. However, a large portion of the fate of the upcoming trade war rests on Lutnick’s shoulders. Therefore, to hold him accountable, it is necessary to look at the trade deficit with China, domestic production of semiconductors and chips, and U.S. prices (if the tariffs drive inflation, neither Lutkin nor Bessent would’ve been particularly successful). 

Secretary of Housing: Scott Turner

The high price of Housing is an acute issue for young Americans looking to build a future. Perhaps no sector is as important and vital for economic opportunity and prosperity as housing is. As a real estate mogul, Trump is of course intimately familiar with the housing market and is well aware of  both its current situation and the proposals in place to fix it. For his part, Trump focused on the price of housing during the campaign as a harmful byproduct of general inflation in the economy and immigration. To specifically combat the issue, he advocated for reducing regulations on home construction and allowing homes to be constructed on certain residential lands. 

Trump’s pick for the position, Scott Turner, has an extremely unconventional background. Turner is a former NFL player who was head of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council during Trump’s first term. As head of the council, he was tasked with coordinating with other federal agencies to attract investment into economically disadvantaged areas.  He is also a pastor, motivational speaker, and chair of the Center for education opportunity at America First Policy Institute (a think tank established by former Trump staffers).

Trump has remained relatively silent on his plans for public housing and affordable housing construction, meaning that Turner likely has large leeway to set policy on this issue. Since Trump himself has identified his perceived causes of the housing crisis (illegal immigration and bad economic policy leading to inflation) it is fair to place the burden for reducing that cost on President Trump, and by extension Turner (which would not be the case if Trump had blamed something like  an acute supply chain issue for high prices). Holding Turner accountable would consist of examining if he reduced homelessness, reduced housing prices, and increased the construction of affordable housing, all while not excessively deregulating the market or sacrificing federal lands. However, housing in particular, operates on a longer time frame: bad policy and lending for many years accumulated to crash the market in 2007. Therefore, for Turner in particular, while we can approximate his success with these short term metrics, assessing his true impact will only be possible far after his term is over.

Conclusion:

All of these picks share Trump’s economic vision and are being given a broad mandate to execute it. Although economic policy is multifaceted and complex, the metrics proposed in this brief will approximate whether these Cabinet picks succeeded or failed to accomplish the goals that were explicitly put in front of them.

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