Trump risks backlash with wish for economic crash in 'next 12 months'

Former President Trump's statement this week that if there's an economic crash, he hopes it will be within the "next 12 months" is a risky move that has opened him to Democratic criticism.

The former president said in an interview this week that he expects the U.S. economy to crash and hopes it does before he would take office in January 2025, if reelected. Above all, Trump said he would not want to be known as another Herbert Hoover.

While Democrats have ripped Trump's comments as scornful of the millions of Americans who would lose their jobs in a recession, the remarks may have little bearing on his campaign as he continues to defy political gravity.

"The reason candidates don't say that historically is because a recession is horrible for people," said Gordon Gray, vice president for economic policy at the American Action Forum (AAF), a right-leaning research nonprofit.

"People lose their jobs, their houses, it takes them years — if ever they recover," Gray added. "Normal candidates value that. Donald Trump is not a normal candidate, and that's why he can get away with this kind of thing. He's untethered to norms and usual political forces."

The state of the economy — and how Americans feel about it — could play a central role in President Biden and Trump's likely rematch.

The economy is an issue Trump sees as a success under his administration, when inflation and gas prices were low before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Biden came into office with predictions of a looming recession, but the economy instead appears to have achieved a soft landing, a success his White House often touts.

While the Biden campaign is hopeful voters will eventually give the president credit for his economic agenda, Trump is hoping for a crash to hurt Biden politically, an unprecedented strategy for a presidential candidate considering the implications of a bad economy on voters.

"Donald Trump's greatest worry right now is that the economy is actually in very good condition," said Daniel Alpert, managing partner of investment firm Westwood Capital.

"He understands that his free ride with the public right now is dependent on their bad memories of inflation. [As] that fades over time, in November he could be up against a candidate who stewarded a very strong economy and the memories of inflation will have long passed," Alpert said.

In an interview with former Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs on a network launched by MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, Trump called the economy "fragile" and said he is hoping for a crash within the year.

"And when there's a crash — I hope it's going to be during this next 12 months because I don't want to be Herbert Hoover," Trump said in the interview that aired Monday night. "The one president I just don't want to be, Herbert Hoover."

Then-President Hoover had been in office for just a few months when the stock market crashed in 1929, triggering the Great Depression. Biden, meanwhile, has brought up in numerous speeches that Trump is one of two presidents — along with Hoover — who left office with fewer jobs than when he entered.

"One was President Hoover and the other was Donald Hoover Trump," Biden said in September. "My predecessor promised to be the greatest job president in history. Well, it didn't really work out that way. He lost 2 million jobs in the course of his presidency."

Biden has struggled to turn a rapid rebound from the COVID-19 recession into a political edge against Trump, who left office as the economy kicked into another gear.

he November unemployment rate of 3.7 percent was just 0.2 percentage points above its pre-pandemic level, which was then a five-decade low. The annual inflation rate also dropped to 3.1 percent in November from a peak of 9.1 percent in June 2022.

Financial markets also closed out 2023 with a record-breaking rally after a brutal year of losses in 2022, when the Federal Reserve began ramping up interest rates.

The Fed is now projecting a series of rate cuts in 2024, which could further stimulate the economy as Biden attempts to channel its strength into another White House term.

But while the president has tried to tie the roaring recovery to his enactment of trillions of dollars in economic relief and infrastructure investments, polling suggests voters aren't resonating with his economic message.

Biden's aides were quick to bash Trump's rhetoric on the economy, and the president is slated to give remarks on his economic agenda Friday, during which he will likely bring up the comments.

Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez said Trump's comments show he "doesn't give a damn about people."

"In his relentless pursuit of power and retribution, Donald Trump is rooting for a reality where millions of Americans lose their jobs and live with the crushing anxiety of figuring out how to afford basic needs," she said.

Other Biden aides said the comments were vile and that those who were hoping the economy failed were "revealing twisted true colors."

Josh Bivens, chief economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said although Trump's comments are "bad," he thinks a 2024 crash would be "very surprising."

"For now, the economy is strong and there's no glaring vulnerability like a huge asset market bubble someplace — spending is mostly being financed out of earnings from a strong labor market," he said. "So, my expectation is for a quite strong 2024. There are always wild cards like some crazy geopolitical shock, but the economic fundamentals of the U.S. look good for 2024."

Comments from Trump have raised eyebrows and created an opening for Democrats to bash him, but they didn't negatively impact his polling numbers.

The former president recently said he'd be a dictator on the first day of a second term and said immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country," comments that Democrats likened to Adolf Hitler.

But, he's still polling above his GOP rivals and either head-to-head or above the president in recent polls. The aggregation of polls kept by The Hill/Decision Desk HQ shows Trump with a lead of 1.2 percentage points against Biden.

Some Republicans argue Trump's comments will be chalked up to the former president feeding into the rivalry between him and Biden.

"It's common for political opponents to talk down the strength of the economy and talk up economic risks when they're out of the White House, and most voters will likely see this as more of the same out-party doomsaying," said Bruce Mehlman, former assistant secretary at the Commerce Department under former President George W. Bush and founding partner at Mehlman Consulting.

Meanwhile, others stressed the unprecedented nature of his remarks.

"If you believe that you're going to be the president in the next election, and you think that a downturn in the business cycle is possible or even probable over the next year, well, you'd want the upside, not the downside," Gray said.

While opposition parties and candidates typically downplay the economy's successes and focus on its shortcomings under the incumbent president, Gray said Trump's remarks go beyond basic campaigning.

"There's an element of his rhetoric that is in no way novel and is entirely within keeping with campaign rhetoric, and then there's a Trumpian excess," he said.

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