Larry Summers: The Best Hope for Our Economy Is That There Will Be Enough Quick Damage from Trump’s Steel Tariffs So He Reverses Course

EXCERPT:

SUMMERS: “You can make a case, I don‘t support it, for more protection organized in a systematic way to retaliate for particular foreign abuses. I‘m not enthusiastic about that strategy, but I understand the rationale for it. This set of strategies that are driven to different places, seemingly at random every other day, is just a prescription for more uncertainty premiums in U.S. markets, higher interest rates and higher mortgage rates, higher inflation in the form of higher prices for U.S. consumers, and for reducing the competitiveness of American industry because they‘re going to lose the inputs that are crucial to their success. I think the strategy is very, very dangerous, and the best hope for our economy is that there will be enough damage to markets quickly that the administration is led to correct, or that the judiciary points up what‘s true, which is that sweeping tariff changes of this kind are the prerogative of the Congress, not of the president."