It isn't immediately clear that the administration's heterodox approach to state capitalism is more destructive than what passes as orthodox. Personally I'm not a fan of either option. Given the general mainstream preference for interventionism, one could characterize it as a "progressive" approach to central planning.

A more coherent critique might lay out the shortcomings of both flavors of economic interventionism. Instead, we're stuck in a partisan debate over who has a better central planning approach. Maybe there are reasonable or pragmatic points to be made there, but admitting as much allows the possibility that perhaps Trump's interventions should be measured empirically, rather than rejected based on the a priori flaws of interventionism.

Partisans are free to pick and choose which statistics and time periods they feel best illustrate their case. Easy to see how this devolves into incoherence.

US unemployment is up, inflation is up, tourism is down, defence sales are being cancelled admidst the largest procurement expansion in history, foreign investment is down, business confidence has been shattered by an incoherent and arbitrarily changing tarrif regime.

Oh and the President is advocating that businesses should stop quarterly reporting...