by Justin H. Vassallo
UnHerd
As Donald Trump hit the 100-day mark of his second presidency, news of a first quarter economic contraction seemed to confirm most voters’ fears about his tariff gambit. At 0.3%, it was smaller than the first quarter contraction of 2022, the sole dip of former President Joe Biden’s term, when pandemic stimulus policies were winding down and inflation was peaking. Yet the impact of April’s market sell-off, pauses on inventory orders and investment, ebbing international trade flows, and the 145% tariff rate on China has yet to fully reverberate through the economy. Absent a radical reversal in Trump’s trade posture, mainstream economists warn, stagflation — a combination of high inflation, stagnant or falling output, and rising unemployment — is imminent.
Trump has been unfazed by such warnings, glibly stating that children will “maybe” have fewer “dolls” than they used to. And for those who believe Trump is playing four-dimensional chess, fundamentally shifting the makeup of the American economy, decoupling from China, and reducing the overall trade deficit — all this is worth the pain. This, even as few of these cheerleaders have indications of what it is that Trump wants America to produce more of, and fewer still have realistic estimates of how long it will take to achieve all these ends.