Trump's growth and trade agendas are at odds. His economic team will point to the winner.

livemint.com:

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Wall Street is glued to “The Apprentice: Treasury Edition." The auditioning for President-elect Donald Trump’s Treasury secretary isn’t just great theater. Trump’s choice will be key to where his economic agenda is headed.

There are two main planks to that agenda: tax cuts and deregulation to bolster economic growth; and tariffs to reduce the trade deficit and bring back factory jobs. The problem is that these two planks are in conflict. Faster growth and bigger budget deficits boost imports and the dollar, widening the trade deficit and making U.S.

manufacturers less competitive. Tariffs dent consumer spending and business confidence and put upward pressure on inflation and interest rates, undermining growth. Trump can emphasize stronger growth or a smaller trade deficit, but not both.

This is where his Treasury pick comes in. The hedge-fund manager Scott Bessent, until recently the front-runner for Treasury, and Howard Lutnick, chief executive of the financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald, nominated to be commerce secretary, have called tariffs a negotiating tool, which presumably means tariffs won’t go up that much once other countries make concessions. Former Federal Reserve governor Kevin Warsh is a free trader.

If any of these three were the primary driver of Trump’s economic policies, then that favors lower taxes and not much in the way of tariffs. The views of two other candidates—Marc Rowan, chief executive of the private-equity giant Apollo Global Management, and Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty—are unclear.