Trump Goes Nuclear on Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Paul Krugman Over Tariffs Jab: ‘Deranged BUM’

(Photo by Gene Medi/NurPhoto via AP)

President Donald Trump unleashed on Nobel Prize-winning economist and ex-New York Times columnist Paul Krugman as a “deranged BUM” for articles panning his administration’s tariff regime.

Krugman left The Times after two and a half decades in early December to start his own Substack, where he has been a vocal critic of Trump’s tariffs and, like many other economists, has continued to warn how the price of the policy would land with U.S. consumers.

In an article posted on Sunday Krugman called “most” of the tariffs “clearly illegal” and said Trump “has reversed 90 years of tariff reductions,” blasting the president’s “false promise” the moves would deliver “a revival in manufacturing jobs.”

Hours later, in a scathing late-night rant on Truth Social, Trump attacked the economist for “predicting Doom and Gloom” and even appeared to threaten to “sue” Krugman’s former employer, the Times:

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 has 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 HISTOY” [sic] because of this Trump Deranged BUM. Sue them!

The outburst comes just days after Trump celebrated the rollout of his long and cautiously awaited tariffs blitz, targeting countries around the world. The new import taxes range from 10 to 50 percent with the administration casting the levies as a patriotic correction to decades of trade “abuse” by foreign governments.

Still looming is Tuesday’s Aug. 12 deadline to strike a trade agreement with China. Failure could trigger threatened tariffs as high as 245 percent.