Narayana Kocherlakota, Columnist

Trump Versus the Fed

His economic policies would probably conflict with the central bank's. How would he handle that?

May 10, 2016 at 4:53 PM UTC

Narayana Kocherlakota is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a professor of economics at the University of Rochester and was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 2009 to 2015.

She might not be amused.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

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Donald Trump's ideas about managing the U.S. government's finances have generated a lot of debate, shedding useful light on the presidential hopeful's unconventional approach to economic policy. But Trump has yet to address a crucial issue: How he would manage a likely conflict with one of the world's most powerful institutions -- the Federal Reserve.

Trump has proposed large spending increases and steep tax cuts, a combination that the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has estimated would boost government debt to 129 percent of gross domestic product over 10 years, from about 75 percent now. (As far as I can tell, this estimate does not include Trump’s more recent proposals to increase infrastructure and military spending.)