Often there’s business news on at the gym where I go to work out each day. I’ve noticed over the last handful of days that CNBC has had a series of chyrons over their panels, all of which are some version of “why is the market so downbeat all of a sudden?” There are also some similar ones about consumer confidence, which has also been dropping. Economies are complex and no shift — including temporary ones — can be definitively ascribed to a single factor. But as I’ve watched this, I’ve been struck by how little discussion there is of one fairly straightforward explanation.
Normally, in such a situation, you wouldn’t put much of this on an administration that has been in office for barely more than a month. But let’s remember that Trump has been talking about massive tariffs for a year and since mid-November business owners and consumers have known they are coming. Some are now in place, though the massive 25% ones on Mexico and Canada are on hold. (Speaking of which, has Trump forgotten about those?) There’s also widespread chaos throughout the federal government. And, finally, there’s the fact that lots of federal money that gets pumped into research, universities, agriculture, public health, building projects and a million other things is still only barely flowing. Economies are resilient, mostly. But taken together that’s a mix of a lot of money being pulled out of the economy (frozen federal dollars), expectations of higher prices (tariffs) and uncertainty (Trump being a freak) all at once.
Now we’re starting to see Fox Business shift toward saying that all the amazing stuff that Trump and Musk are doing might cause “a bit of temporary pain.” But that’s the price of making America great.
