ZadekpediaStephen Moore is a supply-side economist who served as an economic advisor to Donald Trump. Bob Zadek introduced him as a founder and former president of the Club for Growth, a former member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, a commentator on Fox News and later CNN’s chief economic commentator, and co-author with Arthur Laffer of Trumponomics Stephen Moore on Trumponomics (2018). In a later episode, guest host Charlie Deist described Moore as a supply-side economist who believes tax cuts tend to pay for themselves, noted his master’s degree in economics, and said Trump had consulted him on key economic proposals including free trade David Henderson on Trumponomics, Deficits, and Immigration (2019).
On the show
1 appearance, 2018.
- 2018-10-06 · Stephen Moore on Trumponomics · 47:31 — Principles and Successes of Trumponomics.
Their books discussed on the show
Trumponomics
Moore told Zadek that the program of deregulation and lower taxes was working even better than when he, Larry Kudlow and others drew it up, and that it had produced 4% growth and the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years. He cited a Wall Street Journal story showing the biggest wage and income gains in the prior 18 months went to the lowest-income Americans, including adults without a high school education. Moore attributed the change to replacing a community organizer who knew nothing about business with a pro-business businessman. He described the last chapter of his book, titled after a remark by a Cleveland auto mechanic about a light switch being flicked from off to on the day after Trump’s election, and said business owners from Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine reported a new burst of confidence and optimism Stephen Moore on Trumponomics (2018).
Moore also described a fiscal cost of the Obama years: $10 trillion of debt that future generations would be paying for over the next 100 years. He compared it to borrowing and squandering a million dollars, saying the borrower is worse off because the money must be repaid Stephen Moore on Trumponomics (2018).
The Committee to Unleash American Prosperity
Zadek asked Moore about the Committee to Unleash American Prosperity, which Moore formed with Arthur Laffer, Larry Kudlow and Steve Forbes. Moore called Forbes, Kudlow and Laffer economic icons and probably the best economists of the last 50 years, and said Forbes changed the country when he ran for president in 1996. He recalled that Forbes ran on a reformist free-market agenda of term limits, Social Security personal accounts, a flat tax, no corporate income tax and medical savings accounts—ideas Moore said had become boilerplate Republican Party positions. The group’s purpose, Moore said, was to educate Republicans so that candidates in 2016 ran on a pro-growth, supply-side, lower-tax, less-regulation agenda; they met Trump and teamed up with him. Moore said Kudlow was now Trump’s chief economist and the most important economist in the world, and described Trump as not ideological like Ronald Reagan but a common-sense businessman who understood that cutting business taxes lets businesses invest more. Moore invoked Kudlow’s formulation that taxing something yields less of it and taxing it less yields more Stephen Moore on Trumponomics (2018).
Federal Reserve nomination
In March 2019, Deist told listeners that Trump had nominated Moore to the Federal Reserve Board, that the move looked politically motivated after Moore’s Wall Street Journal op-ed calling the Fed’s interest-rate hikes a threat to growth, and that Moore had suggested Jerome Powell might step down. Deist framed the question as whether the Fed’s job is to promote growth under a particular president or to focus on price stability, a stable dollar, or an aggregate measure of an economy neither overheating nor artificially depressed, and said critics feared the central bank’s independence was at stake David Henderson on Trumponomics, Deficits, and Immigration (2019).
David Henderson, described as Professor Emeritus at the Naval Postgraduate School and a Hoover Institution research fellow, said that although he and Moore were friendly, he did not think Moore knew enough about monetary policy. He said he would support someone deeply critical of the Fed who really knows Fed policy, naming Larry White of George Mason University and George Selgin, and recounted that the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank had made an exception to its practice of posting recorded panel talks the year he spoke, which he attributed to a slide comparing central planning of steel to central planning of money. Henderson called Moore a very nice guy but a very careless one, said his writing showed it, and argued Moore would be better suited to Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy, where he would push for capital gains tax cuts—an area where Henderson said reducing the rate somewhat would probably raise revenue, as Moore laid out in his article on capital gains in Henderson’s Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. Henderson called putting Moore on the Fed a wasted slot David Henderson on Trumponomics, Deficits, and Immigration (2019).
Across episodes
The two 2018–2019 episodes treat Moore differently: the October 2018 interview presents his own account of Trumponomics, while the March 2019 episode, with Deist hosting and Henderson as guest, turns to his qualifications for the Federal Reserve. A September 2019 episode on trade adds only Zadek’s remark that Trump, advisor Navarro and Moore have complained China treats the US unfairly from a trade standpoint Trump’s War on Trade (2019).