• Fox News host Sean Hannity: “In one of his greatest all-time moments on the campaign trail, former President Donald Trump absolutely schooled Bloomberg's editor-in- chief today during a live appearance at the Economic Club of Chicago.” Hannity added, “Trump frankly masterfully navigated the situation, laid out what was a clear vision for American prosperity.” [Fox News, Hannity, 10/15/24]
• Fox host Greg Gutfeld: “Donald Trump taking a jackhammer to a hostile reporter vigorously defending his tariff plan and other policies while speaking at the Economic Club of Chicago.” [Fox News, The Five, 10/15/24]
• Fox host Laura Ingraham: “Now, how many politicians can step out on stage with no notes and lay out the intricacies of U.S. trade policy, the Federal Reserve, interest rates, et cetera, with a hostile reporter?” Ingraham continued: “The man the press claimed is losing his mind not only showed up, he made a sputtering piece of mincemeat out of this poor reporter,” praising Trump for ignoring experts’ analyses of his tariff plans. She concluded: “He went through Mr. Bloomberg with the British accent like a hot knife through butter. It was a beautiful thing to watch.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 10/15/24]
• Fox guest Ned Ryun: “The great part about Trump is he's fearless. He'll go into these hostile environments, whether it's the National Association of Black Journalists or today's economic club and Bloomberg to have these conversations in front of an audience that might be hostile, with a hostile reporter.” Ingraham continued her gushing praise of Trump, saying, “I thought Trump today was just fabulous on this economic forum,” and, “This was something to behold.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 10/15/24; Media Matters, 7/31/24]
• Fox host Jesse Watters: “Trump was in rare form” during the Bloomberg interview and “pretty much had them eating out of his hand.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 10/15/24]

As Rolling Stone summarized, Trump “crumbles” when pressed on economic policy. It “quickly became clear that the former president has no conception of the mechanics of or the potential ramifications of the economic platform he’s running on. Bluntly, the former president was incoherent when pressed with real questions about his policies.” The article pointed to multiple examples of Trump’s inability to stay on topic when asked economic questions, and “when questioned about the specifics of his plan, and if he was aware of its pitfalls, Trump seemed ignorant of basic economic principles, insisting that other countries, not American consumers, would pay for the tariffs.”

Over at The Washington Post, national columnist Philip Bump wrote that due to Trump’s halting performance when asked about his economic policies, “the myth of Businessman Trump has collapsed.” The Atlantic staff writer David A. Graham wrote of Trump’s interview, “When Donald Trump speaks about the economy, he sounds like a child.” And over at MSNBC’s MaddowBlog, Steve Benen detailed just how much Trump fumbled when asked about the economy:

Economists from across the political spectrum have warned that Trump’s various economic policy proposals — especially his plan to implement a set of sweeping tariffs on imported goods — would dampen the economy, raise the inflation rate, and cost American families thousands of dollars a year. 

On March 27, the Center for American Progress Action Fund released a report finding that Trump's proposal of a 10% across the board tariff on imported goods “would amount to a roughly $1,500 annual tax increase for the typical American household.” The report further concluded that while the tariff would drive up prices, it would fail to achieve Trump's stated goal of “significantly boost[ing] U.S. manufacturing and jobs.” In August, CAP Action ran a similar analysis when Trump proposed increasing his economy-wide tariff to 20%, and found that the result would be up to $3,900 in increased taxes for a typical American family.

In a June 25 joint letter, 16 Nobel Prize-winning economists warned that “if Donald Trump successfully enacts his agenda, it will increase inflation” and “have a negative impact on the U.S.’s economic standing in the world and a destabilizing effect on the U.S.’s domestic economy.”

The sweeping adverse effects of Trump's tariff proposals have gotten more attention from economists and other experts as Election Day has drawn nearer, with Trump potentially just weeks away from having the power to implement his vision and upend the American economy. The most recent studies and surveys of economists have found:

• An October Yale Budget Lab study determined that Trump’s tariffs alone could shrink the size of the American economy by up to 1.4%, or $325 billion annually, create price increases of up to 5.1%, and decrease the average family’s purchasing power by up to $7,600.
• A Wall Street Journal survey of economists in October found that 68% of them “said prices would rise faster under Trump than under Harris. That was up from 56% in July.”
• On October 16, The Washington Post reported that oil and gasoline market analyst Patrick de Haan predicted gasoline prices “would increase by as much as 75 cents per gallon in the Midwest” because the region is dependent on imported petroleum products from Canada.
• A September Peterson Institute of International Economics study found that Trump’s tariffs combined with his mass deportation plan and tightened grip on the Federal Reserve would result in up to 9.7% lower than baseline economic growth and 3.4% lower employment through 2040, and up to a 9.3% inflation rate in just two years.