Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers says he would have quit over Trump's tariffs plan.

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https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/04/03/business/trump-tariffs#former-treasury-secretary-lawrence-summers-says-he-would-have-quit-over-trumps-tariffs-plan

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers says he would have quit over Trump’s tariffs plan.

Lawrence Summers, who served as Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, said he would have “resigned in protest” had he been part of an administration that implemented the sort of “dangerous and damaging” tariffs plan announced by President Trump.

In a string of posts on X on Thursday afternoon, Mr. Summers compared President Trump’s tariff policy to “what creationism is to biology, astrology is to astronomy, or RFK thought is to vaccine science.”

“If any administration of which I was a part had launched an economic policy so totally ungrounded in serious analysis or so dangerous and damaging, I would have resigned in protest,” Mr. Summers wrote.

Mr. Summers, an economist who also served as director of the National Economic Council in the Obama administration, also suggested that Trump administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and leaders of the National Economic Council and the Council of Economic Advisers, should be “studying examples like Cyrus Vance and Elliott Richardson” — two officials who resigned over actions taken by the presidents who had appointed them.

“Both served their country splendidly and enhanced their reputation by disassociating from approaches they saw as dangerously misguided,” he posted.