Trump is a drunk driver taking the economy off the cliff into a needless recession—as we warned https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-drunk-driver-taking-economy-144530081.html We presciently warned for a year and earlier this week in Fortune that Trump’s economic policies and this week’s “Liberation Day” tariffs announcement would prove to be a cataclysmic event. Like frat boys in denial that the driver of their car is dangerously drunk, Trump acolytes such as Peter Navarro, who ludicrously implored “trust in Trump,” and Howard Lutnick, who flippantly argued, “let Trump run the global economy,” are cheering as Trump, intoxicated with his power, is inches away from blindly driving the U.S. economy off the cliff with other silent enabling lieutenants paralyzed by fear. Many economists have focused on the hyperinflationary nature of Trump’s tariffs, the tariff-driven 15% plunge in the stock market wiping out ~$5 trillion in wealth, the damage to consumer confidence, the laughably dubious way the ‘reciprocal’ tariffs formula was calculated, and the specter of retaliatory tariffs. That was enough to fully fund the Ukraine war for a century and fund the NIH for a century. But there is an even greater concern we’ve been hearing over and over from CEOs that is hugely underappreciated—which is that businesses are becoming entirely paralyzed from authorizing new investments. That’s because Trump’s tariffs are being enacted in the most uncertainty-inducing way possible, with Trump already signaling his openness to deals to reduce country-specific tariffs—the ones he just enacted 48 hours ago. That fits Trump’s classic negotiating style, which is to punch ’em in the face so hard that they are all but begging for a deal, and to make it up as he goes along from there. That might have worked for Trump when he was running the family business of the Trump Organization, but it is plainly catastrophic now. The global economy is not the Trump Organization. Business investment paralyzed CEOs from automakers to pharma chiefs and computer components tell us Trump’s whiplash-inducing pronouncements are counterproductive in the confusion he creates. Businesses need predictability and years of lead time in order to authorize new investments, because it generally takes upwards of five years from the moment an investment is authorized to the moment a factory is ready to go. No business can authorize investments that cost billions of dollars of shareholders’ money in plants, factories, or reshoring supply chains when there is such head-spinning policy turbulence; any CEOs that tried to do so would likely be fired by their board and investors on the spot. With tariff policy shifting not day by day, but hour by hour, with over 100 such pivots (as we previously documented) and apparently many more on the way amidst what’ll be weeks of frenzied negotiations, business investment is entirely paralyzed—and will continue to be frozen for the foreseeable future. That is exactly the opposite of what Trump intended. Though Trump likes to tout glitzy announcements of new investments from businesses into the U.S., the reality is that few of these investments truly pan out, calling to mind first-term misfires such as Foxconn’s planned $10 billion electronics factory in Wisconsin which turned into abandoned shadows and idled plants. Many CEOs have started merely repackaging existing planned capital expenditures into a gauzy headline-drawing big number to appease Trump superficially, tossing in everything from normal operating expenses to employee salaries to inflate their headline amounts, while actually suspending new investment plans in practice. For Trump to cite long past business promises to invest in the U.S. as if they were new responses to the current, delusional economic pronouncements is ludicrous. The paralysis of hundreds of billions in business investment is already trickling through to the broader economy: NFIB Small Business confidence has plunged 50%, the labor market is deteriorating as the number of new layoffs quadrupled over the last three months, capital spending and investments have come to a standstill, and GDP growth forecasts have come down by 1%—but the downward cycle is just getting started. The long-term economic consequences from the paralysis of business investment would be absolutely devastating. After all, U.S. businesses account for a whopping 88% of U.S. GDP growth every year and are responsible for 85% of U.S. workforce hiring, so what is at stake amounts to tens of trillions of lost investment, and millions of lost jobs. Trump’s defenders point out that Trump could actually end up securing genuine concessions from some foreign countries in the days and weeks ahead, especially from our Asian trader partners—after all, even Trump realizes low value-add industries such as textiles, clothing, and shoes aren’t coming back to the U.S., and it’s reasonable to expect that the list of tariff “exemptions” will grow in exchange for new market opportunities, the removal of non-tariff trade barriers, and lower tariff rates from foreign countries. Reciprocal tariffs and a trade war But even if Trump scores some genuine wins, for U.S. businesses, the negatives still far outweigh the positives. It’s clear that tariff policy is being driven entirely by Trump’s idiosyncratic whims and flights of fancy with little checks and balances and few critical constituencies. Trump and Trump alone is calling the shots, relishing the game of pitting countries and companies against each other in a high-stakes competition for his favor. The cascade of retaliatory strikes from trading partners has already begun, with China announcing 34% tariff hikes against the U.S. and a block against many agricultural imports from the U.S. Furthermore, with some of our oldest, strongest allies, such as the EU—which Trump has long loathed—already signaling they will be coming out with reciprocal tariffs in the days ahead, the global trade war will only continue to escalate even if one-off deals are struck along the way here and there. All that means that no matter what “wins” Trump extracts, businesses will remain substantively paralyzed; and as long as Trump continues his idiosyncratic approach to tariffs with one-off negotiations, that will fail to provide the necessary clarity that businesses need to invest and move forward. Trump’s carnival barking turns the White House into a circus, but no matter how loudly he shouts false economic facts, his growling does not make them so. Clearly, Trump’s tariffs will send the economy tumbling straight into a recession induced by Trump and Trump alone. What we wrote earlier this week is even more true now: The real “liberation day” that U.S. businesses and the U.S. economy need is liberation from Trump’s idiosyncratic tariff whims. Someone sober like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent or National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett needs to take over the economic wheel—fast.
Not needless. Useful for getting rip-off countries to renegotiate trade. Only done by extreme pressure. He gets them to the table. They are calling Whitehouse now..several countries. LOL
According to Trump causing a recession is OK; he just doesn't want a depression. I thought he was going to "Make America Great Again". Trump acknowledged he could cause a recession, but just didn’t want a depression, according to WSJ https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/10/tru...didnt-want-a-depression-according-to-wsj.html President Donald Trump was aware the economy could enter a recession, but wanted to avoid a depression, from his tariffs, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Kevin Hassett, director of the U.S. National Economic Council, told CNBC on Thursday that the collapsing bond market contributed to Trump’s decision to walk back his trade policy. President Donald Trump wanted to avoid sending the economy into a depression through his contentious plan for tariffs, according to The Wall Street Journal. Trump privately said he was aware that his broad and steep plan for levies unveiled last week could tip the economy into a recession, but he didn’t want a depression, according to a Wednesday night report from the paper, citing people familiar with the conversations. Trump also told advisors that he was willing to accept “pain” over the policy, a person who spoke with him on Monday told the Journal. A depression is considered by economists to take place when a recession becomes more severe and entails higher unemployment and a more prolonged downturn. The U.S. has avoided them since the Great Depression in the 1930s — when unemployment hit 25% — because of progress in monetary policy and fiscal policy, along with programs like deposit insurance from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. While many economists were starting to predict a recession from Trump’s high tariffs paralyzing global trade, none were saying it would lead to a depression. Bond yields soared while equities cratered in the days before Trump said he would rollback some of his country-specific tariffs on Wednesday. His reversal powered a sharp comeback in the stock market, with the S&P 500 on Wednesday registering its best day since 2008. Kevin Hassett, director of the U.S. National Economic Council, told CNBC on Thursday that the bond market decline contributed to Trump’s decision. The 10-year Treasury yield overnight Tuesday into Wednesday spiked above 4.5% on speculation a big foreign holder like Japan or China was dumping bonds. Bond prices move inversely to yields. “Everything was moving forward in an orderly fashion,” Hassett said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “There’s no doubt that the Treasury market yesterday made it so that the decision that, you know, it is about time to move was made with, I think, perhaps a little more urgency. But it was going to happen.” Trump also acknowledged the role of investor concerns during remarks made after the decision on Wednesday. “I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line,” Trump said. “They were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid.” White House Spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement to CNBC that Trump changed his policy after the administration received commitments from a majority of trading partners to strike “favorable” deals. He said the administration would use both tariffs and negotiations as tools to confront trade deficits. “The only interest guiding President Trump’s decision making is the best interest of the American people,” Desai said. A driver of Trump’s alterations was the rising role of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in advising on trade policy, according to the Journal, which cited people close to the situation. The number of countries negotiating with the White House also made Trump open to switching course, a person who talked with the president told the Journal.
TL;DR In other words: Trump's team was already planning some kind of shit, but then the bond market called their bluff, so they panicked and hit the button faster than planned. It's like watching a bunch of arsonists standing next to a burning building going, "Oh wow, look at that fire. Guess it's time to call the fire department, huh?" And yeah, that casual "we might spark a recession but at least not a depression lol" meme is peak 2025 clown show vibe. But whatever.