Joseph Stiglitz
Cameron Costa | CNBC
sixteen Nobel PrizeAward-winning economists signed a joint letter on Tuesday warning that they would face economic risks if former President Trump is re-elected, including a renewed rise in inflation.
“While we each have different opinions on the specifics of various economic policies, we all agree that Joe Biden’s economic agenda is far superior to Donald Trump’s,” the economists wrote. Axios is first report this letter.
“People are rightly concerned that Donald Trump will reignite inflation with his fiscally irresponsible budget,” the progressive group of political scholars wrote.
Trump has so far proposed making his first-term tax cuts permanent, imposing universal tariffs on all imports, with tariffs ranging from 60% to 100% on China, and pressuring the independent Federal Reserve to cut interest rates.
Economists and Wall Street analysts have predicted that any or all of these proposals could lead to a renewed rise in prices, which remain fragile despite cooling slightly in recent months.
Joseph Stiglitz, the 2001 Nobel laureate, led Tuesday’s letter. His co-signers include George Akerlof, Sir Angus Deaton, Claudia Golding, Sir Oliver Hart, Eric Maskin, Daniel McFadden, Paul Milgrom, Roger Myerson, Edmund Phelps, Paul Romer, Alvin Ross, William Sharp, Robert Shiller, Christopher Simms, and Robert Wilson .
“Nonpartisan researchers including Evercore, Allianz, Oxford Economics and the Peterson Institute predict that inflation will increase if Donald Trump succeeds in implementing his agenda,” the economists wrote.
The timing of Tuesday’s letter is noteworthy, just days before Trump and Biden are scheduled to face off in the first presidential debate of the election. The Atlanta debate, hosted by CNN, is expected to spend a lot of time discussing economic issues, particularly inflation.
The Trump campaign firmly rejects the Nobel economist’s position.
“The American people don’t need worthless, out-of-touch Nobel Peace Prize winners to tell them which president put more money in their pockets,” Trump campaign spokesperson Carolyn Leavitt said in a statement to CNBC. Much money.
Under Trump’s leadership, December consumer price index year-on-year He was dismissed in three of his four years in office.
The Nobel laureate’s letter on Tuesday contained strong political views.
Many of these economists have signed similar agreements September 2021 Letter Expressed support for President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” package. Critics at the time argued that the massive spending program would drive up inflation.
At the time, Stiglitz observed that some people “used concerns about inflation as a reason not to invest” in building back better. “This view is short-sighted,” he said in a press release.
This time, Stiglitz and his co-signers took a more cautious approach to inflation.
The U.S. economy has spent the past year recovering from a surge in inflation in 2023.
It’s a product of pandemic-era supply chain chaos that has left the global trading system unable to meet the needs of U.S. consumers, many of whom have been able to survive the pandemic in part thanks to generous government subsidies like the expanded child tax Credit and Paycheck Protection Program.
— CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger contributed to this report.
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