The president is pushing for stimulus policies generally preferred by Democrats, as major U.S. businesses signal that coronavirus fears could smother key parts of the American economy.
Eight months from a general election, President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers are considering an urgent effort to rescue the U.S. economy from a coronavirus panic.
Trump advisers and GOP lawmakers have spent the past few days pushing the White House to develop a package of economic stimulus measures, designed to prop up the economy amid growing fears about the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S.
Trump and his aides have been battering the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates — shrugging off the central bank’s traditional independence — only to get an emergency rate cut Tuesday and then watch investors get spooked by the signal
And they’re watching a flood of announcements from multinational U.S. companies signaling trouble that could strangle the American economy for months to come.
The frenzied push to boost the economy is colliding with Republican orthodoxy opposing short-term stimulus during the last recession. But it’s a reflection of what some Republicans recognize as an existential threat to Trump’s reelection: a potential downturn in the economy and financial markets in the run-up to a close and heated presidential election.
“I don’t think it’s good policy,” one senior administration official said. “The whole litany of temporary measures to stimulate the economy … I don’t think it works.”
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Article URL : https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/03/trump-economic-record-coronavirus-119920