Trump's economic plans could be foiled by 'bond vigilantes'

President-elect Donald Trump will sweep into office in January with few formal checks to his power. Republicans control the House and Senate, while a conservative majority sits on the Supreme Court. For his critics, it’s a dispiriting time.

But as other presidents have learned, there are some checks and balances that aren’t described in your AP Gov textbook.

An unlikely one surfaced recently as veteran Wall Street strategist Ed Yardeni cautioned that investors in U.S. bonds could play a critical role in forcing the incoming Trump administration to back down from its plans for an all-out trade war with everyone from China to Mexico and Canada.

Reviving a term he first coined in the 1980s, Yardeni warned that “bond vigilantes” could take action if Trump’s plans go too far.

Like Batman, these vigilantes only swing into action when the system isn’t working. Instead of putting on a costume and roughing up street punks, though, they simply sell off 10-year government bonds when they think the government isn’t being serious about long-term fiscal policy. That may not sound dramatic, but it can have huge effects, raising the costs of government borrowing and even forcing the Federal Reserve to change course.

There’s a great anecdote demonstrating exactly how serious this threat can be in Bob Woodward’s book “The Agenda,” about the early days of Bill Clinton’s presidency. The Arkansas governor had not yet taken office when he sat down for a briefing on his economic plans. One of his advisers then explained how a lot would depend on whether bond traders thought his plans to reduce the deficit were credible.

“At the president-elect’s end of the table, Clinton’s face turned red with anger and disbelief,” Woodward wrote. “‘You mean to tell me that the success of my program and my re-election hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of f—— bond traders?’ he responded in a half-whisper.”

More recently, bond vigilantes in Great Britain were blamed for the downfall of Prime Minister Liz Truss. After she announced a package of energy subsidies and tax cuts that would be paid for by raising deficits, investors in British government bonds rebelled, causing interest rates to rise and hurting the pound. Truss’ party revolted, and she was forced to resign after just a few months in office, famously outlasted by a slowly rotting head of lettuce.

There’s no risk of something quite so dramatic in the U.S., where bond traders don’t have nearly as much influence due to the strength of the dollar. But Wall Street analysts point to ways in which Trump’s plans to dramatically disrupt the federal government and foreign trade could backfire on him.

If bond traders start to think that deficits are getting too high due to Trump’s tax cuts and inflation is going to make a comeback due to his tariffs, they could get antsy. If they start selling, the government has to raise interest rates to compensate, borrowing gets more expensive, the Federal Reserve starts worrying more about inflation, local chambers of commerce start nervously calling up their Republican representatives — and suddenly Trump doesn’t have quite so compliant a Congress.

The same dynamic can play out in a number of different ways over the next four years, in part due to Trump’s blunt-force proposals for his second term.

Trump’s plans for mass deportations will be checked by responses from civil rights activists, immigration lawyers, farmers, Democratic state attorneys general, federal judges and foreign officials. His plans for slashing government programs will be balanced by angry constituents, labor unions, government contractors and special interest groups. And many of his plans can be thwarted by sufficient public outrage, especially as lawmakers start looking ahead to the midterms.

Trump has grand plans to remake America. He will succeed in some and fail at others. But in all of them he will face a rule of politics as ironclad as Newton’s third law of motion: Every action he takes will have an equal and opposite reaction somewhere else.

The first response to watch may very well be from vigilante bond traders. But there will be others to come, and often from equally unlikely quarters.