COLUMN: How economics work despite Trump’s ‘monumental ignorance’

‘It is clear that no professional economist was involved (in the U.S. tariff plan) … Policy appears to be made not in the Oval Office but from the seat of a golf cart,’ says columnist Economics is often called "the dismal science," a description originally coined by Thomas Carlyle in 1849. Economics isn't actually "dismal" as we understand the word today, but it's definitely a "science." Science explains processes or describes the world around us, hoping to predict the future, at least in part. The sciences are not perfect, but generally work well for physics and chemistry, but less so…