This week in Trumponomics

President Trump is getting his way, as many states begin to ease or entirely lift stay-at-home rules meant to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman joins Jen Rogers, Myles Udland, and Akiko Fujita to discuss and gives this weeks Trump-o-meter reading.

Video Transcript

JEN ROGERS: [INAUDIBLE] the moment you've been waiting for in your long week is here. Rick Newman has the Trump-o-meter. And Rick, to refresh people's memories, the Trump-o-meter has been expanded. You add nasty as a category.

RICK NEWMAN: Yeah, it jumped the tracks last week, the Trump-o-meter. We needed a new category. That jobs report was so awful that a mere sad did not do it justice. So the Trump-o-meter now has a seventh reading. It is nasty.

But Trump does not get a-- he does not score a nasty this week, Jen. He's gonna improve by a couple of notches, all the way up to failing. And here's the logic.

I mean, we got more terrible economic news this week just today, industrial production and retail sales both the worst declines on record. Obviously, terrible news, but I think we are accustomed to this, and we're prepared for all these bad news events right now.

I think the good thing that's going on that counteracts that a little bit is we are actually getting some gradual reopenings in states. And I'm not sure all of these are gonna stick, but we are-- it seems like in many states, it's kind of the right way to go. So even here in New York, which is a hotspot, we're having modified reopenings, not in New York City but in other parts of the state. East Coast beaches, they're gonna to be open-- that's Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey. Florida, which a lot of people thought was opening-- reopening too soon, actually, doing OK not seeing a huge spike in cases there, despite reopenings.

We did have a chaotic reopening in Wisconsin, where there's a big fight between Democrats and Republicans that just basically has resulted in 72 different sets of rules for every county in the state. So that's a little bit chaotic. But look, I mean, we do seem to be taking baby steps toward getting back to normal. I think this is gonna be excruciatingly slow, and it's gonna be experimental for a while. But I think it's also, in a way, encouraging.

JEN ROGERS: So he's moving up based on the reopening, not on the economic data that we've gotten this week. Is that right?

RICK NEWMAN: Yeah, that's kind of how I see it. You know, one other thing Trump-- you know, that works against Trump this week-- look, everybody, I think, who's taking this problem seriously thinks we need a really aggressive national testing and contact tracing program. Why wouldn't you do that? You could do it for $100 billion at the most, which is, you know, 1/30 of what Nancy Pelosi wants to spend in this new stimulus bill. That's the best thing you could do to limit the spread of the virus in a way that gives people the confidence to go back out.

Trump doesn't want to do that. He's just adamantly against, and I think we got a clue why this week. He said testing is overrated-- that's the word he used-- and he also said that, well, if-- the more tests you do, the more cases you're gonna have, almost as if to say, well, why would we do that? We don't want more cases.

But the people have the virus whether you test them or not. And the big thing that's gonna be missing from some of these reopenings is public confidence. Even though you reopen businesses, are people gonna be confident enough to go out? I think that's gonna be the last part of the puzzle that falls into place.

People really are not going out in a lot of places. So you gotta make them feel confident that they can do it, and we don't have a plan for that yet.

JEN ROGERS: It's always been hard to figure out, I think, what to grade him on in some weeks. So he told the governors to call their own shots, so the opening that is happening is state-based. Is he gonna be continued to be graded on that, so if it goes well, even if he keeps doing his own thing, in the end that benefits him?

RICK NEWMAN: Well, the Trump-o-meter measures developments in the Trump economy more than it measures the behavior or the policies of President Trump himself. We've always tried to be clear about that. I think the one interesting thing is-- so this bill that the Democrats want to pass this week does include $75 billion for an aggressive national testing program.

Now that bill is not-- Republicans are not gonna approve that bill. But it does tell you that maybe some money for testing could get into-- some more money-- they've already put some money in. Maybe more money will get put into a future bill, and it will require the Trump administration to do-- to establish a national program.

But even if it does that, if Trump himself is reluctant to do it, what would you end up with? Congress telling him to do it, and Trump probably dragging his feet all the way to Election Day. He just doesn't want to do it, and I don't expect he will.

JEN ROGERS: Because I didn't get enough time with the actual printed-out material last week, can I see the full Trump-o-meter with the nasty [INAUDIBLE]?

RICK NEWMAN: Full nasty? You want to see the full nasty, Jen?

JEN ROGERS: I want to see the full nasty. That's exactly what I'm going for. I didn't really-- I see how you added it in. Now I get it. It's on his face.

RICK NEWMAN: I mean, I'd be happy if we don't have to pull it out. But I'm not throwing it away. It's sitting there in a folder.

JEN ROGERS: [LAUGHS] All right. Well, Trump-o-meter and the week that was-- we have a lot more discussion coming up on the economy after this. Rick Newman, thank you very much.