Economist Paul Krugman thinks Donald Trump's presidential campaign actually gets a few things right.

Krugman previously derided the Republican real-estate mogul as a "belligerent, loudmouth racist with not an ounce of compassion."

But in a Monday op-ed article in The New York Times, the left-leaning writer praised Trump's "heresies" from Republican orthodoxy when it comes to economic policy.

"So am I saying that Mr. Trump is better and more serious than he's given credit for being?" Krugman asked, making it clear that he was still not a Trump supporter. "Not at all — he is exactly the ignorant blowhard he seems to be. It's when it comes to his rivals that appearances can be deceiving. Some of them may come across as reasonable and thoughtful, but in reality they are anything but."

Trump surged to the front of the GOP pack based on his heated rhetoric toward immigration and other issues. Trump, however, has taken a more populist approach toward taxes, trade, and healthcare policy. He supports raising taxes on hedge funds, opposes the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, and once supported a single-payer healthcare system.

Krugman singled out Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, in particular for attacking Trump on these sorts of issues instead of going after the developer's "implicit racism and his insistence that he would somehow round up 11 million undocumented immigrants and remove them from our soil."