Trump's top economic adviser Larry Kudlow, who was appointed to Trump's committee for reopening the economy just yesterday, says Trump will release guidelines for opening the economy before the end of the week.
It's not clear if Trump's committee has even held a single meeting or agreed to anything yet, but it apparently doesn't matter in any case.
Kudlow appeared on Fox Business this morning where he delivered the grim news.
National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow told Fox Business Network’s Stuart Varney on Tuesday morning that President Trump will make an announcement on reopening the economy “in the next day or two.” [...]
“But I don’t want to front run his views. I don’t want to pre-announce anything this morning,” Kudlow said. “I just want to say again, you know, it’s a question of health, it’s a question of safety and it’s a question of wellbeing.”
Kudlow concluded that he believes the country will “see great economic numbers in the back end of the year.”
Kudlow is wrong about virtually everything so he may be wrong about this as well, but my gut says this is going to happen because Trump himself has not stopped talking about it. Trump will also likely be looking to recapture the headlines following high profile endorsements for Joe Biden by Bernie Sanders and President Obama.
The fact that reopening the economy prematurely will likely lead to more deaths is clearly beside the point for Trump. His primary concern is himself; his image; his reelection.
Kudlow says we're going to see "great economic numbers" by the end of the year, but that puts him in an increasingly small minority even among fellow financial pundits like himself. Some portion of the economy will reopen in the coming months, but consumer demand may not return to "normal" levels for a much longer time. It may not even be possible for consumer demand to return to anything resembling normal until a vaccine for the coronavirus is available. Moreover, millions of consumers are going to be dealing with the debt they're accumulating right now.