President Trump is exercising direct authority over the economy in ways that few recent presidents have, flexing his muscle over institutions, agencies and commercial sectors where executive power has long been considered unwelcome, if not altogether irrelevant.

His no-holds-barred pressure campaign on the Federal Reserve, his reversal of post-war U.S. trade policy, his rejection of congressional budgetary mandates, his encroachment on private-sector companies, and his superintendence over labor market data represent an interventionist approach to the economy that’s a far cry from the institutional norms of past decades.

Interventionism has increased in recent years, drawing comparisons to eras of explicit industrial policy and other methods of state management of the economy, and the trend is only getting stronger during Trump’s second term.

“Presidents [usually] steer within informal or extra-Constitutional constraints, and those are the constraints that Trump is busting through,” Daniel Sargent, an economic historian at the University of California, told The Hill. “Trump is transgressing decades-long norms.”

Influence over monetary policy

Trump’s pressure campaign on the Fed reached a new level of intensity this week when he moved to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook over a mortgage fraud allegation — a claim that administration officials have directed at other political foes of the president, as well.

The attempted firing is the most dramatic act of Trump's pressure campaign so far, which has focused largely on Fed Chair Jerome Powell. The president has constantly mocked Powell on social media, and accused him of mismanaging renovations of the Fed's headquarters, even ambushing the Fed chief with a new cost estimate for a facility renovation in front of rolling television cameras.

Behind the curtain, the White House is seeking greater control of monetary policy — specifically lower interest rates that could boost corporate profits and rally financial markets. Several of his predecessors, including Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon, have pushed the Fed for loose money, though less publicly than Trump's pressure campaign.

But Trump has taken his push a step further by urging the Fed to reduce the costs of financing the $36 trillion national debt, blurring the lines between both fiscal and monetary policy and........

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