Has the worst passed? This is the faint hope that economic circles are clinging to after Donald Trump's first 100 days in office, which have triggered distrust and indescribable chaos due to his trade war and caused a nearly 10% drop in the dollar against the euro. The Wall Street Journal is so stunned that it has invoked the spirit of a Frenchman, a Socialist no less – François Mitterrand.
"Is this Trump's Mitterrand Moment?" The Wall Street Journal's editorial board asked on April 23. "Readers of a certain age will recall how the French Socialist President swept into power in 1981 promising a far left agenda of government control over the private economy. The market reaction was brutal. Within a year, he had put socialism on pause and by 1983 he had abandoned most of it. He went on to serve two terms," wrote the daily, which called on the US president, losing support amid recession fears, to follow this path. "Better to heed the polls and the verdict of Adam Smith [an 18th-century Scottish economist and theorist of the market's invisible hand], and take the Mitterrand path to political survival," concluded the editorial.
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