Trump economy team mirrors his campaign

Birds of a feather flock together. It applies to Donald trump and his team of billionaires. The Republican presidential candidate has unveiled an economic team that’s a mirror image of the candidate. The 13-member team includes several billionaire bankers and investment managers. They are all men. And they have been in business with Donald before. Here lies the dichotomy. Trump has always railed against Wall Street and business elites at his campaign rallies. But that has not stopped him from turning to many of them for economic advice.
They certainly can provide many useful insights, assuming Trump is willing to listen to them. But the team lack diversity in terms of expertise and background. The group is heavily weighted toward developers, hedge fund managers and bankers, with hardly any representatives from Silicon Valley or academia. And that raises the question how well the expertise on the list really matches up with some of the challenges facing the American economy.
There’s been this divide between the establishment Republicans and the Trump candidacy. It’s reflected in the advisers. It is not the standard list of establishment conservatives. None of the big Wall Street banks, such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., are represented. Such prominent Republican academic advisers as Glenn Hubbard of the Columbia Business School and Gregory Mankiw of Harvard University also aren’t included. Also missing: Carl Icahn, whom Trump has touted as possible Treasury secretary in his administration.
Trump called the team “a formidable group of experienced and talented individuals” that will help him rebuild an economy that he charges has been decimated by the Democrats and their policies.
The announcement of his advisers comes ahead of a speech to the Detroit Economic Club that could help Trump re-focus his campaign after a string of feuds and missteps was capped on Thursday by post-convention polls showing him trailing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
The economists advising Trump also are mostly outside the mainstream and are admirers of the late Ronald Reagan, the Republican icon who reshaped the US economy as president from 1981 to 1989. Trump will be ‘broadening’ the economic plan he has already offered and deal with tax cuts, ‘tax repatriation,’ and deregulation. The tax overhaul will be one of the biggest tax cuts since Ronald Reagan. A big part of it will be a reduction in the corporate tax rate to 15 percent. The overall proposal will result in a revenue loss of about $3 trillion.
Like the candidate himself, the economic team includes a number of people known for bucking conventional thinking.
A key question is how influential the advisers will be. The candidate has a reputation for keeping his own counsel and relying on members of his own family for advice. Much of the team seems to be people whom Trump knows personally. Indeed, some have even crossed swords with the candidate in
business dealings.
This team is a reflection of his campaign. It’s a rejection of the establishment.