‘Sue them!’ President calls NY Times economist a ‘Trump Deranged BUM’ for being ‘wrong for years’

A Nobel Prize-winning “Trump Deranged BUM” took serious heat from the president over his latest economic “Doom and Gloom” that found many contending the award “doesn’t mean much.”

Sunday, New Keynesian economist Paul Krugman had a considerable amount to say about President Donald Trump’s supposedly “clearly illegal” tariffs. However, nods to the Great Depression were no match for the dealmaker-in-chief’s unbridled optimism about market performance as Trump chided the analyst as “wrong for YEARS.”

Following Krugman’s latest piece titled, “The Economics of Smoot Hawley 2.0, Part II,” the president took to Truth Social to slam the former New York Times columnist and said, “Paul Krugman of the New York Times has been predicting Doom and Gloom ever since my great election success in 2016. In other words, he had been wrong for YEARS, as ALL markets have been hitting new HIGHS, and are now higher than ever before. People stayed out of the ‘BEST MARKET IN [HISTORY]’ because of this Trump Deranged BUM. Sue them!”

Within the economist’s article, the tariff policy was dubbed “Smoot Hawley 2.0” as a reference to the Great Depression era Tariff Act that was meant to protect American companies from foreign competition and instead resulted in retaliatory tariffs.

Expecting a Federal Circuit Court to uphold the decision of the Court of International Trade ahead of an anticipated Supreme Court appeal, Krugman argued, “Most of Donald Trump’s tariffs are clearly illegal.”

He also attempted to make a case that the president had “reversed 90 years of tariff reductions” by featuring a chart of the average U.S. tariffs between 1929 and the present with data from Statista and the Yale Budget Lab that showed the last 50 years sitting somewhere between 0-5% tariff rates.

Of course projections of the purported “high tariffs” that were “probably here to stay,” still fell below the rate imposed a few years prior to Smoot-Hawley following the 1922 Fordney McCumber Act implemented to protect manufacturers and farmers, as charted by the Visual Capitalist using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. International Trade Commission and Tax Foundation.

It was also less than half the rate during the 1890s before the Sixteenth Amendment and the implementation of a federal income tax.

While Krugman went on to make arguments on how tariffs are “regressive tax increases that help pay for regressive tax cuts,” offer a “false promise of a revival in manufacturing jobs” and how he views the impact on wages, the president plowed ahead with making historic trade deals worth hundreds of billions of dollars as he leveraged the threat of higher tariffs to impact foreign policy.

Only days earlier, he warned India that it had three weeks to cease importation of Russian petroleum products, roughly 1.75 million barrels of oil per day, or the current tariff rate of 25% imposed on July 30 would be increased to 50%.

Like Trump, reactions on social media found little favor for Krugman or his 2008 award, as one X user said, “I sat through Krugman’s masterclass hoping to learn something. I think I learned about Marxism, and that the Nobel prize doesn’t mean much.”

I sat through Krugman’s masterclass hoping to learn something. I think I learned about Marxism, and that the Nobel prize doesn’t mean much.

— Richard (@Richard_Hague) August 11, 2025

Paul Krugman won the Nobel. Trump hadn’t yet.

This needs to be fixed.

— QGU (@qgu) August 11, 2025

No adjectives for Krugman? I’m so disappointed. “Deranged Krugman”, “mentally challenged Krugman,” “retarded Krugman” — come on Mr President, this is low hanging fruit.

— A is A (@weRessential) August 11, 2025

Krugman’s been wrong for years. Market performance speaks for itself. Still waiting for that recession he promised.

— Hat3Asylum (@Hat3Asylum) August 11, 2025

Krugman is proof that a Nobel Prize doesn’t mean you know anything.

P. Krugman 1998, “The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’ becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005, it will become clear that the…

— The Alpha Cow (@Marcus_Porcius2) August 11, 2025

Staff Writer

Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn’t researching current events and their impacts, you’ll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.

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