For economists and CEOs, Trump is the micromanager from hell

Boston Globe

a day ago

The president — who I would ordinarily assume is too busy to micromanage our lives — has started to reach into companies and reprimand workers who, in his view, aren't doing a good job.
Consider Jan Hatzius, the chief economist at Goldman Sachs, who isn't a particularly famous person, except to the CNBC set. In 2009, Arizona State University awarded Hatzius
Get Starting Point
A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.
Enter Email
Sign Up
Hatzius may not be People's 'Sexiest Man Alive.' But still. For an economist, accuracy is sexy enough.
Advertisement
At least it was until last week, when President Trump asked Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon to fire Hatzius because he predicted that tariffs would increasingly strain the economy.
'Tariffs have not caused Inflation, or any other problems for America, other than massive amounts of CASH pouring into our Treasury's coffers,' Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Of course, the president is entitled to his opinion, but he went further than that. 'I think that David should go out and get himself a new Economist,' Trump noted, 'or, maybe, he ought to just focus on being a DJ, and not bother running a major Financial Institution.'
Advertisement
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon is interviewed on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York on July 16.
Seth Wenig/Associated Press
Hatzius may turn out to be wrong about the effect of tariffs, but with a doctorate in economics from Oxford and 30 years working as an economist, he's unquestionably an expert. If I was looking to predict where the economy was going, I'd have to choose the two-time 'Most Accurate Economist' over the president.
In the days after the president's post, the wholesale cost of goods
'You can fire the BLS Commissioner [
'People are still going to experience what they're experiencing at the grocery store. They're still going to experience what they are experiencing in the job market,' she says. 'The economy is a very, very difficult thing to obfuscate. You know, who are you gonna believe? Me? Or your lying bank account?'
The president has argued that the tariffs will be absorbed by other countries, but Gimbel (along with most economists) disagrees. 'There is a lot of evidence about this, and the evidence is that the US consumer pays the tariffs.... The people who are gonna get hurt by this are the people who are trying to buy bananas for their 1-year-olds at the grocery store.'
Advertisement
But the president's singling out of individuals doing their jobs is part of a disturbing
pattern.
The call for Solomon to axe Hatzius — or perhaps to step aside himself — came just a few days after Trump demanded the firing of Lip-Bu Tan, the CEO of Intel. 'The CEO of Intel is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately,' the president noted on Truth Social. 'There is no other solution to this problem.'
Intel's shares immediately dipped, and Tan went to the White House to try to convince the president he deserved his job. Apparently, things went well, because Trump then wrote on social media that Tan's 'success and rise is an amazing story,' and the US government is now discussing taking a stake in the company. (Though being a 'success' seems to have little connection to whether or not Tan has ties to China that might serve as conflicts, which was Trump's original allegation.)
Lip-Bu Tan, chief executive officer of Intel Corp., departs following a meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 11.
Alex Wroblewski/Bloomberg
Ordinarily, whether Tan is well-suited to run Intel would seem to have little to do with the president. Tan's background is in physics and nuclear engineering (he has a master's degree from MIT), and he joined Intel earlier this year to help the one-time king of computer chips reverse its multi-year slide.
But why trust tech experts to run tech companies? Why trust economists to make economic predictions?
Of course, part of what we're seeing is a broader devaluing of expertise and data. But we're also starting to inhabit a world in which the president is always watching. And what he says does more than move markets — it affects livelihoods.
Advertisement
If a restaurateur talks publicly about the effect of surging vegetable prices in his restaurant, beware of blowback. (On Aug. 14, the government released data
Increasingly, corporate leaders — even those lower than the C-suite — may start to wonder: Should they say what they think? Write what they believe? How worried should companies be about those who don't toe the party line?
In
Bloomberg
, Mihir Sharma
Sharma might be overreacting, or not. But fear is settling in. And no one knows where the line is. That can't be good for business, largely because it silences independent thinkers, those with contrarian views, and anyone who is perceived as somehow out of the mainstream.
In our new reality, expertise doesn't protect you. Obscurity doesn't protect you. Data doesn't protect you. Telling the truth — perhaps even just being who you are — may be a problem.
And if the president isn't a fan of yours, beware. He may just let you know.
Follow Kara Miller