OK, whatever. I am sure he will make some statement tomorrow indicating a recession is imminent. Trump Says He Doesn’t See US Recession, Downplays Market Turmoil https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-says-doesn-t-see-195341415.html (Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump downplayed a sharp market selloff spurred by worries that his tariff agenda will drag the world’s largest economy into a downturn, saying he did not foresee the US going into a recession. “I don’t see it at all. I think this country’s going to boom,” Trump said Tuesday at the White House. Trump added that markets “are going to go up and they’re going to go down. But you know what, we have to rebuild our country.” Trump’s comments come amid a three-week stretch of market volatility. Stocks fell earlier Tuesday after the president offered fresh tariff threats against Canada, the largest US trading partner. That action saw the S&P 500 Index selloff hit 10% off its February high before buyers moved in to stem the rout. Trump later indicated he would ease off previously announced 50% steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada, which helped further pare losses, though the S&P was still down on the day. The sharp declines in recent weeks have followed warnings from the president and administration officials that the US economy may be in for a difficult stretch as they use tariffs to rebalance trade flows and pursue sharp cuts to the federal government’s spending and workforce. Trump in an interview that aired on Fox News on Sunday had declined to rule out the possibility of a recession. Trump, who has long looked to the markets as vindication for his economic policies, in recent weeks has downplayed that metric — a stance he repeated on Tuesday. “Nope, doesn’t concern me,” Trump said when asked about the market volatility. “I think some people are going to make great deals by buying stocks and bonds and all the things they’re buying. I think we’re going to have an economy that’s a real economy, not a fake economy.” Trump spoke alongside billionaire adviser Elon Musk, as he purchased one of the tech entrepreneur’s Tesla Inc. vehicles, an effort to boost an ally after the company’s stock plunged on Monday. Musk is leading Trump’s controversial Department of Government Efficiency effort that has rattled Washington with its moves to slash the federal government — an initiative that the president and his allies say will bring growth to the private sector. “They were putting in all government jobs,” Trump said. “You can’t have all government jobs. You have no income to pay the workers.”
Trump is trying to deliberately tank the economy so he can blame the recession on Biden. At this point it is the only reasonable explanation. Commentary: Trump may be wooing a 'Bidencession' https://finance.yahoo.com/news/its-...-just-cares-about-tariffs-more-122514444.html Joe Biden finished his one presidential term without a recession. Or did he? Now that Donald Trump’s second presidential term has gotten off to a rocky start, there’s mounting suspicion that if a recession develops soon, Trump won’t hesitate to blame it on Biden. There’s a more radical corollary: Trump might not even mind tipping the economy into recession early in his term while it’s easier to argue that it’s Biden’s fault. “We have talked recently with Washington insiders who think Trump wouldn't mind a recession this year,” Greg Valliere, chief US policy strategist for AGF Investments, said in his March 10 newsletter. “The Democrats — desperate for an issue — may have one.” It’s hard to imagine any normal president trying to deliberately weaken the economy. Recessions are highly unpredictable and even when they’re officially over, high unemployment and depressed living standards can linger for months or years, bringing down any politician they’re associated with. Yet investors are stunned by the damage Trump has done to the economy in just two months. When Trump took office on Jan. 20, GDP growth was a solid 2.5%, the unemployment rate was a low 4.1%, and stocks were on a nice post-election run-up. Investors expected a “Trump bump” to keep the good times rolling, maybe even enliven the party. Instead, Trump has rolled out tariffs more aggressively than almost anybody expected while showing no concern about unnerving sell-offs in the stock market. Forecasters are now lowering their growth estimates for 2025, raising their inflation estimates, and wondering what in the world Trump is trying to do. “The red flags of recession are furiously waving,” Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist for the Economic Outlook Group, wrote in a March 11 analysis. “The current slash and burn policy by the Trump Administration makes little economic sense.” Unless, that is, part of Trump’s plan is to deliberately stress the economy during his first year in office. Many investors originally thought Trump would threaten severe tariffs but impose far less stringent measures. That storyline has now lapsed. Trump has aggressively ratcheted up his tariffs, and instead of easing up to give stocks a breather — the typical pattern during his first trade war in 2018 — he has basically looked the other way. “You can’t really watch the stock market,” Trump said on March 10. Odder still are some of the messages Trump and his economic advisers are sending. During his speech to Congress on March 4, Trump said his tariffs would cause “a little disturbance, but we’re OK with that.” That sounded like a different person than the first-term President Trump, who bragged repeatedly about the economy, whether warranted or not. Then during a March 9 Fox News interview, Trump dodged the question when asked if he was expecting a recession this year. “There is a period of transition,” he said, elliptically. “What we’re doing is very big. It takes time.” Markets bombed the following day, interpreting Trump’s disregard of recession risks as an ominous sign. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also said recently that the US economy needs a “detox period,” a concept most economists find perplexing, given that Trump inherited a relatively healthy economy. Bessent says the economy needs more private spending and less reliance on government stimulus, which is generally true. But Congress could fix that gradually through less deficit spending and more prudent budgeting. “Detox” implies uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms that aren’t even necessary, given that there’s no crisis at the moment. Bessent’s marmish admonition is prompting comparisons with Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary at the beginning of the Great Depression, who advocated severe austerity, no matter how painful, to “purge the rottenness out of the system.” The Wall Street Journal ran a March 12 analysis suggesting that Trump is taking a similar “liquidationist” approach to the economy by soliciting market failures instead of intervening to stop them. Team Tariff may be signaling that, unlike Trump’s first trade war in 2018 and 2019, they’re not going to let up on tariffs just because markets squeal. The economic “transition” Trump now envisions seems to be far more sweeping than the limited tariffs that marginally raised prices during his first term. If that’s what he plans, then a painful period of supply chain disruptions, higher prices, lower profits, and possibly layoffs may be necessary to achieve whatever the long-term gain might be. Economists don’t see a lot of long-term gain, but they’re already measuring the short-term pain. Some economists have raised their odds of a recession since Trump took office to the range of 30% to 40%. Many others, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, have cut their growth forecasts but stopped short of predicting a recession. Trump and his allies have already started blaming Biden for economic setbacks occurring on Trump’s watch. While trying to explain a brutal 20-day stock market sell-off on March 11, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “We are in a period of transition from the mess that was created under Joe Biden. In the previous administration. Joe Biden left this country in an economic disaster.” A “Bidencession” narrative is also taking root in Trump-friendly media. “We’ll see if Joe Biden’s recession shows up,” a Fox News host said on March 7. To reiterate, there were virtually no signs of a looming recession when Biden left office on Jan. 20. In fact, a “soft landing” seemed to be underway in which the Fed wrangled inflation to tolerable levels without choking off spending so much that it caused a recession. The grace period for a new president being able to credibly blame fresh problems on his predecessor is obviously limited, and the sitting president eventually gets all the blame or credit for what happens in the economy. So if Trump truly wants to cause a recession, maybe he should hurry?
Yep, Americans know they are getting boned by Trump and his accomplices. Americans sour on economy as inflation expectations hit highest level since 1991 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amer...s-hit-highest-level-since-1991-145631578.html Consumer sentiment tumbled in March as the impacts of President Donald Trump's tariff policies and elevated price increases remain top concerns for Americans. The latest University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey released Friday showed sentiment hit its lowest level since November 2022. The index slid to a reading of 57.9, below the 64.7 seen last month and the 63 expected by economists. Pessimism over the inflation outlook soared again in March as one year-inflation expectations jumped to 4.9% from 4.3% the month prior. Just two months ago, consumers had only expected inflation of 3.3% over the next year. Long-run inflation expectations, which track expectations over the next five to 10 years, climbed, too, hitting 3.9% in March, up from 3.4% in February. This marks the highest level of long-term inflation expectations since 1991. Also in the release, the expected change in unemployment hit its lowest level since the Great Financial Crisis. "While current economic conditions were little changed, expectations for the future deteriorated across multiple facets of the economy, including personal finances, labor markets, inflation, business conditions, and stock markets," University of Michigan Survey of Consumers director Joanne Hsu said in the release. "Many consumers cited the high level of uncertainty around policy and other economic factors." Hsu added that frequent gyrations in economic policies make it "very difficult" for consumers to plan for the future and therefore weigh on sentiment. The recent tumble in consumer sentiment has come as the new Trump administration has slapped tariffs on imports from multiple countries but frequently flip-flopped on what the actual tariff rates will be and when they'll be implemented. The European Union and Canada have now also threatened retaliatory tariffs on the United States. The tariff back-and-forth largely hasn't hit incoming inflation data yet. Earlier this week, a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that its "core" Producer Price Index (PPI) — which tracks the price changes companies see and excludes food and energy — rose 3.4% from the year prior, down from the 3.6% seen in January. The day before, the bureau's Consumer Price Index (CPI) showed core prices rose 3.1% in February, the lowest yearly increase in core CPI since April 2021. Capital Economics assistant economist Harry Chambers noted that given recent data, the increase in inflation expectations seen in Friday's survey was "entirely consumers’ increasing concerns about the impact of tariffs." "The plunge in the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index in March, paired with the surge in inflation expectations, indicates that consumers’ concerns about the impact of the Trump administration’s policies are growing," Chambers wrote. The survey's release comes one day after the S&P 500 (^GSPC) officially entered correction, falling more than 10% from its Feb. 19 all-time high. Wall Street strategists have recently noted that the uncertainty around Trump's policies has been a key driver of the recent sell-off. Guggenheim Partners Investment Management CIO Anne Walsh told Yahoo Finance on Wednesday that the "the on, then off, then on and then off again narrative" surrounding tariffs is driving volatility in the market. And as long as that persists, there likely isn't a direct path higher for stocks. "It doesn't feel like a smooth trajectory [for stocks] because of all of the noise," Walsh said. (Article has charts.)
Trump says the economy ‘went to hell’ under Biden. The opposite is true By standard measures such as job and GDP growth and the stock market, the US economy was in excellent shape https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/mar/16/trump-biden-economy
The Orange Chaos Gibbon believes he is so powerful that he can ignore the markets. Trump is ignoring markets at his own peril. Just ask former British PM Liz Truss https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/17/business/liz-truss-markets-tariffs-trump-intl/index.html
Dismissing economic morale as 'fake' has real consequences https://finance.yahoo.com/news/dism...eal-consequences-morning-brief-100024603.html If the knock against the Biden administration was that it was at fault for dismissing the bad vibes — the way many Americans felt about the economy — while pointing stubbornly to good data, what happens when the next administration dismisses both the bad vibes and the bad data? How the current White House talks about the economy is like a funhouse mirror of the "vibecession" we saw in the last few years. Under the last president, people perceived the economy to be in worse shape than the data suggested. Now, the economic data is flashing weakness and consumers are feeling worse. But in recent interviews Trump administration officials have minimized the vibes and the data. “Our Administration and the American people are focused on the real economy, not fake news polling or ‘vibecessions,’" said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in a post on X. Bessent isn’t wrong to say that. Data is critical. But the mood is far from unimportant — just ask Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whose mandate to keep prices stable relies in part on Americans' expectations and their trust in the government to keep the economy stable. And it makes sense, as mood affects spending and hiring decisions. “We’ve been in for eight weeks,” Bessent said on Sunday in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press." “We are putting the policies in place that will make the affordability crisis go down, inflation moderate, and as we set the sails, I am confident that the American people will come our way even if some of the media narrative doesn’t," he continued. But the warning signs in the "media narrative" aren't coming from the finance media. It's corporations raising the alarm. It’s the market plunging into correction territory. It’s the data showing the prospect for weaker growth and higher inflation. It’s the surveys of actual people participating in the economy that are reflecting a souring mood and a darker outlook. This is not academic complaining — this is money talking. The Trump administration says its economic agenda is unfolding according to plan, with the fruits of today's blood, sweat, and tears to come. And many will give the White House the benefit of the doubt in the first 100 days of Trump 2.0. But Bessent and the rest of the Trump administration can wave off these vibes and data as irrelevant at their own peril. Or, rather, everybody's peril. On Monday, RBC Capital Markets followed Goldman Sachs and Yardeni Research to become the latest Wall Street shop to lower its S&P 500 year-end target, citing economic growth concerns. And on Wednesday the Fed will come one step closer to showing signs of how the president's policies are changing the central bank’s expectations for the economy. All the while, it’s not clear how to measure the success of White House policies if the value of indicators is ignored and negative perceptions are rejected. If it's short-term tariff pain for long-term economic gain, as the White House has framed it, the final accounting may be a challenge. Under winning conditions, setting the economic outlook by fiat might pass muster. But not when the market, for now, is the opposite.
Trump: Tariffs will be paid by other countries. Reality: Trump's tariffs are about to raise new car prices $4K - $12K. Car buyers' window for dodging tariff price hikes is about to close, experts warn “There is no way you’re going to see a better discount if you wait three months,” one analyst said. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/car-buying-vehicle-prices-tariffs-rcna196777
So tell me... How does trickle up economics work? New analysis says Trump budget plan will take from poorest 40 percent to give to wealthy https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...-budget-analysis-take-from-poor-b2718333.html