During President Donald Trump’s first administration, longtime economic professor Jeremy Siegel received a request to join it as an economic adviser.

Siegel declined, and he said he did so because he did not agree with the president’s stance then on boosting tariffs on foreign goods. He disagrees even more with it now.

“I was not as supportive of the tariffs as such a position demanded to be,” Siegel said. “I declined that position. As it turned out, he’s making the tariff threats far bigger than he did in his first term.”

Siegel, 78, the same age as the president, spent 45 years teaching economics at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the same school from which Trump graduated. The two never have met.

“I was a Columbia [University] graduate when he was at Wharton,” Siegel said. “I went to teach at Wharton, but he had long since left.”

During a March 5 visit to Naples and again March 6 at the Resnick-Wynn Family Business Conference at Florida Gulf Coast University, Siegel explained his opinion of why increasing tariffs on foreign goods makes bad business sense for the U.S.

Jeremy Siegel

“Now, I like the attempt to get fair trade,” Siegel said, “but it seems to me that there has to be some very, very detailed discussions beforehand.

“Just slapping these 25% tariffs on I think has really upset the markets and really, I think upset public opinion and brought down consumer confidence. Now it can be restored.”

The tariffs distract, Siegel said, from what he deemed to be a better and more effective economic policy enacted by Trump in 2017 — cutting the corporate tax rate.

“I frankly do not like this up and down tariff policy by Trump,” Siegel said. “Trump has a lot of very good policies. And one of the most important ones is extending the 2017 tax cuts. He needs every vote he can get. It’s not going to be easy. He needs to be concentrating on that in my opinion.”

Keeping the economy stable should be Trump’s goal, Siegel said, with the ultimate prize for Republicans being a renewal of the tax cuts.

“We know that at the end of this year, if a tax plan is not passed by Congress, we jump back to the Obama taxes, which I think would be very negative for the economy,” Siegel said. “Because they were too high on corporations and too high on taxes on capital. I think they discouraged investment.”

Siegel was the keynote speaker at the conference, held at FGCU’s Cohen Student Union.

Keith Koenig and Andrew Koenig, the chairman and CEO, respectively, of City Furniture, spoke with Michael Wynn, president of Sunshine Ace hardware, about navigating leadership transitions.

John Macchia Jr., CEO of Advance Turning & Manufacturing Inc., and Martin Czachor Jr., vice president and lead software engineer of Answering Service for Directors, took turns discussing with Chengyi Qu, FGCU assistant professor of computing and data science, about cybersecurity strategies and how to protect family businesses from attacks.

Both of those companies suffered recent cyber ransomware attacks. Macchia detailed how the attack on his company cost it about $1 million.

Siegel closed the conference with a question-and-answer session moderated by John Resnick, founder of The Resnick Group insurance company.

Siegel said those frustrated with inflation should stay optimistic. With the exception of a few things, such as the price of eggs, Siegel expected inflation to soften.

“The big inflation took place in 2021 and 2022,” Siegel said. “And really it slowed down dramatically after that. Prices didn’t come down. It’s a matter of going up at a slower rate after a rapid rate. I’m hoping it will be in the low twos (2% inflation) if he goes easy on the tariffs.”