Businessman Howard Lutnick said on Monday that the group of economists publicly opposing Republican nominee Donald Trump’s economic policies are playing politics.

Sixteen Nobel Prize-winning economists signed a letter in June arguing that Trump’s economic policies would worsen inflation and cause long-lasting harm to the global economy. Lutnick compared this letter to the document signed by 51 intelligence officials in October 2020 that previously cast doubt on the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop during a segment on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

“I think it’s just partisan politics, it’s amazing,” Lutnick said. “It’s like, you remember the 51 intelligence officers who said the Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, and it was just like, Hunter Biden’s laptop, which the FBI must have known in like, what, 10 seconds they knew it was real? So, it’s like saying 15 Nobel laureates, including Janet Yellen’s husband, signs a piece of paper saying, ‘This economics is better than the other.’ It’s just partisan nonsense.”

Billionaire businessman Howard Lutnick said economists disapproving of Trump’s economic policies is “partisan nonsense” pic.twitter.com/Pa49l3dcWQ

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 16, 2024

Some of the economists have repeatedly supported and donated to President Joe Biden’s campaign in 2020, Fox News reported. Economist Joseph Stiglitz, who spearheaded the letter, reportedly donated $1,250 to the Biden Victory Fund in 2020 and signed a letter supporting the president’s Build Back Better agenda.

Georgetown University Professor George A. Akerlof, another signatory, is married to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and donated $25,000 to the Biden Victory Fund in 2020, according to Fox News. Harvard University economist and historian Claudia Goldin donated $500 to the Biden campaign in 2020 and 2024, while economist and mathematician Eric Maskin donated $3,000 to Democrats in recent years.

Lutnick said the only effective way to combat inflation is to reduce energy costs and stop the Federal Reserve from printing money. He further argued that the passage of the American Rescue Plan by President Joe Biden’s administration and the rise in energy costs led to the current inflation.

“We all knew where inflation came from. It’s called the American Rescue Plan, $2 trillion of spending,” Lutnick continued. “Look, you can’t produce inflation without printing money. You don’t print money, you can’t produce inflation.” (RELATED: Wall Street Is Panicking That Trump’s Policies Could Make The Economy Work For Average Americans) 

The American Rescue Plan, which Biden signed into law in March 2021, provided hundreds of billions in funding to schools and small businesses, as well as sending $1,400 stimulus checks to most Americans. Some economists have attributed the administration’s high spending, partially done through the American Rescue Plan and the $750 billion Inflation Reduction Act, for the continued surge in inflation.

Co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin argued supply chain issues also contributed to inflation and that the Federal Reserve printed money during the Trump administration. Lutnick said the Trump administration did not print “too much” money, and argued that the Biden administration has caused oil prices to skyrocket.

“We just won’t drill on it because we don’t want to,” Lutkin said. We want to break, the Democratic Party does not want you in a fossil fuel car. They want to break the fossil fuel car, they want to break mobility. You want to break mobility? You break middle America. You can’t have electric cars operating in middle America, it doesn’t work. So that breaks the rule … So we need fossil fuels for the next 30 and 40 years.”

The U.S. may have been able to produce at least an additional 2 million barrels of oil per day since 2021 if the Biden administration had adopted similar policies as those enacted during former President Donald Trump’s administration.

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