The Atlantic

Trump's High-Pressure Economy

The Trump administration is abandoning conservative economic orthodoxy to create a tighter labor market.
Source: Jae C. Hong / AP

Steve Mnuchin is not exactly a tribune of the people. A wealthy financier with a taste for the high life, he is better known for his glamorous spouse than for his commitment to public service. One could argue that Mnuchin’s chief qualification as treasury secretary is simply that while other more distinguished Goldman Sachs veterans refused to back Donald Trump’s seemingly quixotic presidential campaign, he was an early and enthusiastic supporter, opening his wallet in service to a cause most of his peers found distasteful, if not loathsome in the extreme. And Mnuchin was an unlikely Trump supporter at that. The investment banker turned Hollywood impresario, far from being an enemy of America’s coastal elite, is practically its embodiment. Yet somehow it is Mnuchin who has divined the soundest economic strategy for a populist Trump White House to pursue: , and ignore self-serving cries of labor shortages from corporate

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