What did Donald Trump do today?

He said, via a surrogate, that he wants Americans to feel they can't afford to buy the things they want.

In an interview this morning on CNBC, White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett said that Trump's plan to fight inflation was to "increase supply [of labor] and reduce aggregate demand."

There are a few things to note here. First, Trump is beginning his term having inherited very low inflation, in spite of his campaign claims that inflation was out of control. His trade policies are inflationary—Americans will spend more money for foreign goods once Trump's taxes are added in to the price—but for the moment there isn't really very much excess inflation to fight.

Hassett said that Trump's plan to "increase the supply of labor" would come by slashing the payroll taxes that pay for Social Security. This would save money for employers and theoretically encourage them to hire more workers—although they could also simply take it as profit. Trump has claimed, falsely, that Social Security is insolvent—but shutting down the money it takes in from existing workers really would mean that it would go bust in the near term. 

"Reducing aggregate demand" for goods and services is even harder to sugar-coat. Virtually by definition, that means deliberately causing a recession. This really would lower inflation—prices come down when fewer people can afford what they need. 

Large companies tend to do relatively well during recessions, as they have the resources to weather it, and to buy up smaller competitors who can't. The same is true for wealthy individuals. But for the vast majority of Americans, "reducing aggregate demand" would mean trading a situation where they can buy the goods and services they want at 3% inflation for one where they didn't have the money they needed at 2% inflation.

Hassett did not elaborate on why Trump thought businesses would increase hiring while demand for their goods dropped.

Why does this matter?

• "Let's intentionally cause a recession" is a Bond villain plan, not what a president should be saying.

• The government should focus on fixing problems that exist rather than ones that don't.