s failures
President Trump said twice in two days last week that he doesn’t want to be associated with Herbert Hoover, who served during the early years of the Great Depression.
- “I have one primary wish as president, in terms of people: I never want to be the late, great Herbert Hoover,” he told Marc Caputo on “The Axios Show.”
- Earlier, at his press conference at the G-7 in France, Trump said: “I’ve studied presidents — some good, some bad, some great. … And the one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover.”
Why it matters: Trump often says out loud what he’s really thinking, when most politicians would stifle such musings.
Trump has spent years fearing that a single crash could swallow his presidency, the way the Depression swallowed Hoover’s.
- Trump floated it as early as 2018, when he privately asked aides whether he could fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell — warning that Powell’s rate hikes would “turn me into Hoover.”
- Flashback: The split-screen illustration at the top of this story is a rerun from a story Mike Allen wrote in 2018, “Trump fears being turned into Hoover.”
- In January 2024, Trump predicted an economic crash under President Biden and said he hoped it would land before the election “because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover.”
The parallels run deeper than rhetoric: Hoover — the 31st president, from 1929-1933 — and Trump were both elected as wealthy businessmen promising executive competence.Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, now remembered as a protectionist blunder that worsened the Depression.
- Trump made tariffs the core of his economic project, betting that the policy most associated with Hoover’s failure could fuel a great American comeback.
The irony: Trump is haunted by Hoover because he already carries a Hoover-like footnote.
- Thanks to COVID, Trump left office with nearly 3 million fewer jobs than he inherited — the first president since Hoover to post a net loss.
- During the 2024 campaign, Biden needled him as “Donald ‘Herbert Hoover’ Trump.”
AXIOS
