President Donald Trump stands during a news conference announcing Alexander Acosta as the new Labor Secretary nominee in the East Room at the White House on February 16, 2017 in Washington, DC Getty Images

President Donald Trump has so far shown himself to be not much of a fan of economists. And the feeling appears to be mutual. Not only has Trump rejected economic data, raising questions about its veracity with no evidence, he has also repeatedly misstated it. And he recently decided to demote the Council of Economic Advisers from his Cabinet while failing, to this point, to appoint a chairman. But economists from both sides of the political aisle have similarly rejected much of Trump's economic worldview, ranging from his assessment of the current state of the economy, his diagnosis of what's wrong with it and many of his prescriptions to fix it. "The Trump administration is threatening to drive a silver-spike into the heart of the innovation process,'' Ned Phelps, a Nobel prize-winning economist from Columbia University, said at a recent conference. Phelps, known as a conservative economist who favors deregulation, was speaking about Trump's penchant for intervening directly with companies. He says such policies favor existing companies at the expense of new ones and likened it to the German and Italian "corporatist" economies of the 1930s.

"By expanding protection and interference in the business sector, the Trump administration may very well block the innovation of outsiders and newcomers more than it will stimulate the output of insiders," Phelps said. To be sure, there are ideas at the heart of the president's economic agenda many economists embrace. Lower taxes and a simpler tax system are often preferred by most economists because they reduce distortions in decision-making and can boost growth. And many agree the U.S. corporate tax rate needs to be more globally competitive. "Corporate tax cuts could deliver a sustained increase in wage growth by stimulating business spending and thus raising productivity growth," wrote Deutsche Bank economist Joseph LaVorgna. And deregulation is seen as a winner for boosting economic growth, though economists tend to place value on the benefits of regulation along with counting its costs. All told, several surveys have suggested that the positive side of Trump administration policies add up perhaps to half or a full percentage point at most of gross domestic product, not the many full points touted by the president and his advisors. At his wide-ranging press conference on Thursday, Trump said: "I inherited a mess.'' But many economists suggest nothing could be further from the truth. In testimony this week before Congress, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said the economy was at or near its potential growth rate and close to full employment. The unemployment rate of 4.8 percent is just a 0.1 point above what the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office judges to be the natural rate of unemployment. However, the broader measure of under and unemployment, the so-called U-6 that accounts for those who have dropped out of the workforce and those working part time for economic reasons, is as much as a full percentage point above its prerecession level.