The 2020s, so far, have been one long and often painful lesson in what happens when policymakers tell economists to shut up and go away.
From the COVID-19 pandemic through Bidenflation and onto the Trump 2.0 trade wars, each successive administration to occupy the White House during this decade has made a critical error by assuming it could ignore economic principles—or simply substitute them for a different set of underlying assumptions. Those errors have been made in different ways and for different reasons, yes, but they share this common characteristic: a belief that economics is optional, and that tradeoffs can be eliminated if your motives are in the right place.
