Opinion | Why Trumponomics Could Lead to Trumpflation

So, will we have a ticker-tape parade to celebrate V-I — victory over inflation — Day? I guess not, but we appear to have pulled it off.The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of consumer prices rose only 2.2 percent over the past year, within a whisker of the Fed’s 2 percent inflation target.

And we got there without the recession that quite a few economists predicted — in fact, the U.S.economy grew 6 percent over the past two years, even as inflation plunged.But this victory could be squandered.

And it very likely will be if Donald Trump wins the presidential election.True, we don’t know exactly what Trump would do in office.When he’s pressed about policy issues, even very straightforward ones, he often zones out in a way that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden would never get away with.

For example, on Friday, when an attendee at one of his campaign events asked what he would do to keep auto industry jobs in Michigan, Trump — who on Saturday referred to Biden and Harris as “mentally impaired” — began his response thus:So, pretty much as we’ve been saying and what I want to do is I want to be able to — look, your business, years ago, in this area, I was honored as the man of the year.It was maybe 20 years ago.

Oh, and the fake news heard about it, they said it never happened.The claim doesn’t pass CNN’s fact check, but for Trump, that’s nothing new.More to the point is that his response to an earnest question from a concerned American was to ramble on about himself.

(Also, I suppose, nothing new.)But Trump has consistently pushed for high taxes on imports — something that, contrary to his claims, would ultimately get passed on to consumers — mass deportation of undocumented workers and ending the Fed’s independence, all of which would raise inflation.Among economists recently surveyed by The Financial Times and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, 70 percent thought Trump’s policies would be more inflationary t...