Economists Are in the Wilderness. Can They Find a Way Back to Influence?

Economists have long helped to shape policy on issues like taxes and health care. But flawed forecasts and arcane language have cost them credibility.

Partway through a panel discussion at a recent economics conference in San Francisco, Jason Furman, a former adviser to President Barack Obama, turned to Kimberly Clausing, a former member of the Biden administration and the author of a book extolling the virtues of free trade.

“Everyone in this room agrees with your book,” Mr. Furman said. “No one outside of this room agrees with your book.”

The academics and policy wonks gathered in the hotel conference room laughed, but the comment captured something real: After decades of helping to shape policy on weighty matters like taxes and health insurance, economists find that their influence is at a low ebb.

Free trade is perhaps the closest thing to a universally held value among economists, yet Americans just voted to return to office a president, Donald J. Trump, who has described tariffs as “the most beautiful word in the dictionary” and who often seems to view trade through a mercantilist lens that the field has considered outdated since the days of Adam Smith.

The president he will replace, Joseph R. Biden, was hardly a free-trade zealot himself: He kept in place many of the tariffs that Mr. Trump imposed in his first term, and moved in his final days in office to block the takeover of U.S. Steel by a Japanese company — a decision his own economic advisers opposed.

It isn’t just trade.