A tariff is a regressive tax. What that means is the poorer you are, the greater percentage of your income is going to tax. Combine that with the fact that the poorer you are, the more likely you are to spend the entirety of your income on goods and services and not invest. Putting these things together what can we conclude? Less money is going to goods and services. That's a recession. You don't have to have a Ph.D. in economics to see a pretty severe recession coming our way - entirely of our own making via poor policy.
It's looking a bit iffy with several things lined up at once. There are the Trump tariffs, plus Musk seems a bit obsessed with cutting spending and firing people, plus we were due a bit of a recession anyway from raising interest rates to reduce inflation plus equity and property prices are at high levels by historic standards, plus record consumer debt. It could add up to a big downturn if we're not lucky.
Economists, in general, tend to have a suffer a bit from "nothing ever happens" syndrome; Trump campaigns on the basis that he will do utterly crazy things, and the economists largely sit back and go "hahah, yeah, sure you will". And in fairness, _usually_ they're right; politicians who campaign on doing crazy things _rarely_ do so once elected. Rarely, but not never.
You can see this very clearly with Liz Truss; despite both her and Kwarteng being well-known to favour bonkers-economics, her _election_ was kind of greeted with a shrug. It was only after she actually produced her pseudo-budget that people suddenly went "wait, wtf, she's actually doing it?!" and chaos broke out.
Unfortunately, the US may find it significantly more difficult to de-Trump itself than the UK did to eject Truss.
That creates a hope for the positive outcome of midterms that should at least neutralise Trump for the remaining 2 years? In a way, deadlocked government - that can't do things but can't break them either - is a real Republican ideal.
Trump won’t be neutralised unless Congress is willing to impeach and convict him. He has been pulling stunts like sucking up to Russia and the whole doge business without permission from Congress.
The chances of there being a “convict Trump” supermajority in the Senate after the midterms is basically zero — Dems would need to win all but two of the Senate seats up, or there’d need to be GOP defections.
I'd wager if the economists are right and if it happens within 2 years, politicians of all stripes will be racing to save the political skins.
That will lead to a titanic struggle between the executive branch and the rest, given the past history of Trump setting an armed mob onto Washington. He got away with it that time of course because he wasn't that unpopular. If the economy tanks that crutch is gone. People didn't vote for him because they liked him. They voted against the poor shmuck who happened to be in power when the hangover created by the COVID money bazooka came home to roost. Every democracy that held an election in 2024 did the same thing.
If that happens we will see the if the balance of powers the US founders put into the constitution work. I expect they will, but it will be highly entertaining to watch. From the relative safety of Australia.
It took 4 years for ill effects of the 2020 bazooka to take effect. If the effects of Trumps actions doesn't effect the economy within 2 years, I wouldn't be betting on Congress doing anything.
A lot of people like him a lot. Not all of his voters, but enough that it would take a serious disaster for enough of those to support throwing him out. That would be a massive rupture that would make the party utterly untenable for years to come.
It would take more than a recession. It would take a Great Depression-scale economic event. That's not impossible (and ironically, if it did happen, it would not be solely his fault), but I don't think any of these economists are expecting it. A recession would cause Congress to shift, but the first removal of a President would require an utter economic catastrophe.
Also, note that the person replacing him would be largely identical.
If it's a blowout for the Dems, there might be GOP defections in an impeachment trial. The surviving Republicans who had to stand for election would be the ones from states most loyal to Trump, but there would be plenty who hadn't had to stand. Is Murkowski up for election in 2026? Nope. So there's one possibility.
"Senators Murkowski and Collins, after a private meeting with President Trump, say their concerns have been addressed. Senator Murkowski said, 'He promised he wouldn't do it again so I don't really see much point in impeachment.'"
Always "deeply concerned" but then falls in line just like the rest. More despicable, in some ways, than those who make it clear they are followers of Trump.
Trump is ignoring Congress now. What's to say he won't ignore Congress even if has a Dem majority? Then what? The only way for Congress to keep him in check would be impeachment, but conviction requires 60 votes and if the Senate GOP didn't have the balls to convict him for instigating a f*ing attempted coup to overturn an election, then almost certainly won't convict him on this other stuff.
A Democratic Congress could engage in some serious harassment, hauling people before committees to testify and be berated. Which would just be turning the tables.
Now, what would be interesting is that they surely would ignore the summons, which would invoke a Constitutional crisis.
Gee maybe the economists of the world should have reacted more forcefully and vocally when Trump told them all of them were wrong about how the economy works.
> The Economic Club of Chicago’s membership is a curated composition of business and civic leaders [...] With 2,400 members representing every industry in Chicago, 70 percent of our members are C-suite executives.
They also should have seen through this BS but were presumably thinking about how they personally would benefit from tax cuts and lax regulation.
Mainstream economists were fairly consistent on Trump's economic ideas.
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