In a Risky Gambit, Trump Tries Brute Force to Lower Prices

Nearly one year since returning to the White House, President Trump has come to embrace a risky economic strategy: using the brute force of government as a way to push down prices that remain stubbornly high.

From regulatory threats against private businesses to more punitive actions against policymakers, there appears to be no lever in Washington that Mr. Trump now seems unwilling to pull, even if doing so might exacerbate some of the very economic strains that he is trying to combat.

The extent of Mr. Trump’s interventions have become especially evident over the past month.

He has unleashed a new barrage of attacks on the Federal Reserve, and his administration has opened an investigation into its chair, ostensibly in a bid to force the central bank into lowering interest rates rapidly.

He has similarly taken aim at a vast array of companies and industries — defense contractors, oil giants, big banks and real estate investors, to name a few — whose practices he dislikes or believes to be at odds with his political goals.

Mr. Trump, who unfurled some of his thinking in a rambling speech on Tuesday in Detroit, has cast many of these moves as an extension of his electoral mandate. He insists he is acting in service of an agenda meant to reduce regulation, cut taxes, reorient global trade and stimulate an economic boom for a nation still grappling with high prices and other aftershocks from the pandemic.

But policymakers and economists — even those who support Mr. Trump — increasingly regard his actions as unpredictable and fraught with risk. They see his reliance on punishment and intimidation as a challenge to the very foundation that has made the United States such an enviable economy in the eyes of much of the world.