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You won't find me saying "Trust the plan" at any point.
I do think Trump acts more strategically than virutally any of his detractors give him credit for, though.
But if the complaint is that Trump hasn't taken a chainsaw to entitlements (which, for example, Milei has actually done in Argentina! Well okay, stopping them from increasing is not quite the same thing), stating:
and
I think its worth considering that Trump may be aware of the fact that this current situation is unsustainable AND that making the needed cuts is going to be exceptionally politically unpopular, and that his ultimate approach to addressing this might be something people haven't considered yet.
Otherwise, what exactly do you think his motivations are? Just ignore the debt issue entirely and try to kick the can until he leaves office in a few years? I'm trying to understand the mindset that suggests that Trump acts at semi-random or that he is SOLELY self-interested and doesn't have any goal other than wealth accumulation.
I mean, yeah, you're not saying "trust the plan", you're merely saying "it's worth considering if we should trust the plan". I don't know that this is a major distinction.
What is the behavior of Trump we would expect to see in the world where:
He has a secret weapon for addressing the debt crisis, versus
He has no secret weapon
And does the Trump of our reality behave more similarly to Trump 1 or Trump 2? Well, the most basic graph would suggest Trump 2. Yes, perhaps there are some epicycles that can be added, but where's the payoff? Shall we make a bet about what this graph is going to look like when Trump leaves office and see which one of our theories is a better predictor of reality?
I don't know that his goal is wealth accumulation, I suspect he has already accumulated enough, or at least, it's not his primary goal. I think Trump's primary goal is something like status. He wants people to think that he's the best, that he's the Big Guy. That's why so much of his politics seem to revolve around the respect and deference that he receives, or does not receive, from the people at the other end of the table ("did you say, 'thank you, Mr President'?"). I don't think that the debt crisis is that important to him, and kicking that particular can down the road is a time honored bipartisan tradition at this point. Why not him too?
I would narrow it to "Consider that perhaps a plan exists rather than think he's flailing around and screwing with things for no reason." You can't trust OR distrust the plan if you don't think there's one in the first place. If you don't think there's a plan, then what exactly are we seeing? And why does it often seem to work out for him?
There is no 'secret weapon.' You can either reduce spending, or increase tax revenues... or both.
Reducing spending is a minefield. Increasing tax revenues can work via either economic growth or strategic tax increases (see the Laffer curve for why you might not want to push this very far).
I'm guessing that he's aiming/hoping for unleashed economic growth AND a combination of very gradual tax increases (especially indirect ones) and some monetization of the debt, which is why he's hammering away at the Federal Reserve right now, hoping to get them to reduce interest rates. IF he's going to propose spending cuts, I'd guess that comes after the midterms... which explains why he's expending so much capital to shore up more republican seats (see the current redistricting fight, and preventing mail-in voting and other election fraud issues) in 2026.
If he has any 'secret weapon' at all, it is that he can perhaps convince people to accept a series of individual steps that all seem odd on their own but push us to a 'better' equilibrium in the long run. I think that is EXPLICITLY his goal with negotiating new trade deals that force other countries to reduce tariffs on the U.S.... which can assist with that 'unleashed economic growth' point, up there.
You know, I agree there's a narcissism in what he does. But I don't think he takes himself NEARLY so seriously as you're contending here. Personally, I think he really, genuinely enjoys 'doing deals' and almost everything else about his personality is in service of his negotiation tactics when trying to make such deals happen. "Did you say thank you" is a tactic for putting the other party on the defensive by reminding them how much they've already gotten.
Like, what 'status' did it win him to go walking along the Roof of the White House and to scream at reporters from 100 yards away?. I pretty much believe his explanation that he was just surveying things to help plan out his White House expansions. Sometimes he just does things because... he can.
Talking about Trump doing things for "no reason" is basically a strawman of the anti-Trump position. If I ended up in a situation where I found myself trying to land a 747, I wouldn't be doing things for "no reason" in the cockpit, but it would be a mistake to think that I had a coherent plan to land the plane except to the extent that I'm aware that landing the plane requires reducing speed and reducing altitude.
And as I mentioned, it's not a given that Trump is actually trying to land the plane at all. He may be content to let the next guy try to land it instead.
Very astute, and this ties in to your final point. "The plan," to the extent that it exists, is mostly around Trump increasing his status and self image rather than helping the country. And I think that works perfectly - Trump is certainly better off than he was before he took office. Is the country? Not so sure about that.
Yeah, sure, everyone loves economic growth, or at least, they say they do. However, the problem is that not every policy actually increases economic growth, and for people like Trump who have a multi-decade bee in their bonnet about certain policies (like tariffs), it's implementing the policy that's the focus rather than achieving economic growth.
Let's get down to brass tacks here. Do you actually think that Trump is going to make a dent in the debt crisis? Or is this all just playing devil's advocate? Because if you really do think that he's going to make an impact, I'm much less interested in discussing the 4D chess moves that may or may not suddenly come down the pipe without warning and much more interested in putting down some actual predictions about the debt to GDP ratio and seeing who's right in three years, because I don't think that either of us is going to convince the other.
And if you don't actually believe, then this whole conversation is pointless.
If you didn't understand how the controls work or how to read the instruments, it would be pretty close to just flailing around in there. I mean, you might not crash the plane right away, but all you can do intentionally is experiment to figure out the controls, or radio for assistance. Maybe we could say you have "the concepts of a plan" though!
But sure. You could analogize that to Trump 1.
I think its somewhat evident that Trump 2 has an idea of how the 'controls' of his office work and is better at reading the 'instruments' in terms of how he is progressing.
Yes. I think there's a >50% chance that the Debt-to-GDP ratio is lower when Trump officially exits office than it was when he came in.
If I want to hedge a bit, I'd say that the average Debt to GDP ratio for the 4 years Trump is President will end up being lower than the 4 preceding years of Biden. But that's cheating a bit considering the massive hike that occurred in 2020.
If I'm correct, would that make the problem 'solved?' Hell no not by a long shot. But its a start.
Ayyy this is very fair. NOTE, my position is based more on my belief that certain economic developments in e.g., Robotics, or Space industry, or continued AI progress will boost economic growth in the meantime. Trump's role will be more in removing the barriers that have hampered such industries, rather than him actually passing new laws.
This is ALREADY happening in Argentina! Milei's plan of just cutting as much red tape as possible as quickly as possible has worked!
So, not discounting that black swans could happen, I think its reasonable that similar changes will occur in the U.S.
So yeah, Debt to GDP will work for me, but I'll be much more finicky on the size of the shift in three years.
"I'm back. I forgot my drum."
I had Gemini vibe code this chart of relative changes in debt to GDP over the course of the presidential terms starting from 1966 when the FRED data starts. Of the 11 past presidents (plus Trump I) in the dataset, 5 ended with a debt to GDP ratio better than the one they started with. So knowing nothing about a president at all, we should expect a 45% chance that the deficit to GDP ratio will fall over their tenure. Despite being such a believer in Trump's abilities, you think he's only a little bit better than the base rate in this department.
Trump's first term of course was ruinous for the debt to GDP ratio, but let's let him off the hook because COVID (the massive spike was during Trump's term, not Biden's).
Biden left office with debt to GDP slightly lower than when he came in. Is your prediction here that basically Trump is going to have a similar effect on debt to GDP as Biden did? Not only did Biden manage a modest decrease as well, he was the only guy who managed to reduce debt to GDP by at least 5pp at some point during his term except Clinton! All this without 4D tariff nonsense, but for Trump we have to consider trusting the plan to get the same result, because...?
If we're gonna impoverish people with tariffs, job losses, breaking of government norms, and the rest of Trumponomics, is the best that we can expect simply a replacement-level reduction in debt to GDP? If that's what you consider "a start", you should be singing Biden's praises for giving us that start.
Consider me unimpressed.
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