Trump says he hopes economy collapses in next 12 months: 'I don't want to be like Herbert Hoover'

Former President Trump said in an interview broadcast Monday that he was predicting a crash in the U.S. economy and hoped it would happen within the next year.

In an interview with Lou Dobbs, Trump, the current front-runner in the Republican presidential primaries, said that if re-elected he would not want to serve a similar term to President Hoover, who took office when the economy was weakening, but later ensured the start of the Great Depression.

Trump railed against the economy but acknowledged that it had some good aspects and took credit for those successes.

“We have an economy that is so fragile, and the only reason it's running now is because it's running off the fumes of what we've done,” Trump said. “It just runs off the fumes.”

Trump added: “And if there is a crash – I hope it will happen in the next 12 months because I don't want to be like Herbert Hoover. The one president I just don't want to be is Herbert Hoover.”

However, the U.S. economy defied economists' forecasts and finished 2023 with high marks on a variety of metrics: inflation fell, job growth remained high and the unemployment rate remained low.

“What we're seeing now I think we can call a soft landing, and I hope it lasts,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in an interview on CNN on Friday, shortly after the release of a surprisingly strong December jobs report.

The US added 216,000 jobs and kept the unemployment rate at 3.7 percent in the final month of 2023, far exceeding economists' expectations. According to the Labor Department, the annual inflation rate also fell from 9.1 percent, a four-decade high, in June 2022 to 3.1 percent in November.

“The American people did it,” Yellen said. “The American people go to work every day, participate in the workforce and create new businesses. But President Biden has sought to provide stimulus that will give Americans the tools they need to help grow this economy.”

Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.