Trump’s Covid relief offers too little to help US economy: Experts

Washington, Aug 14 (IANS) US President Donald Trump’s recent coronavirus relief orders have little to offer for the macro US economy in a crisis, experts said.

One of the four executive orders will extend extra unemployment benefits through the end of the year at a level of US $400 per week, Xinhua news agency reported.

The other three actions Trump signed Saturday include a memorandum to defer certain payroll tax obligations, a memorandum to defer student loan payments and an executive order to reinstate the federal moratorium on evictions, which also expired at the end of July.

Mark Zandi, Moody’s Analytics chief economist, wrote in a free analysis that the Trump orders “fall well short of what is needed to avoid renewed job loss and rising unemployment.”

According to his calculation, the orders could provide some US $400 billion in total, which is too little to change anything.

In a talk with Bloomberg, Zandi believes failure to pass a sufficient fiscal stimulus package will lead to the US falling back into economic recession.

JPMorgan Chase economist Michael Feroli wrote: “If this is all we get for fiscal policy for the rest of the year it would represent a significant downside risk to our growth outlook.”

Feroli believes that Trump’s move of bypassing Congress “could reduce the urgency for Congress and the White House to get a more comprehensive deal done”.

The American economy shrank at an annual pace of 32.9 per cent in the second quarter, by far the worst quarter on record.

–IANS

rt/