Alan Zendell, May 1, 2025

Everyone’s talking about how chaotic and unprecedented Donald Trump’s first hundred days were. That’s a good thing. People who are terrified of the future Trump’s leading us to need to know they’re not alone, that almost everyone feels that way. Even some of Trump’s base – they may not turn on him until things get much worse, but they feel the pain and they know who caused it.

Trump’s base will be obediently patient waiting for things to turn around, but they can’t deal with lost income and trashed retirement savings indefinitely, and when those run out, they’ll come face-to-face with MAGA’s destruction of our social service support network. What happens when farmers go bankrupt and their kids need medical care? Will Medicaid still exist by then?

The first quarter 2025 economic numbers came out this week. The one pundits like to focus on is GDP growth, which was negative at -0.3%, compared to the forecast of +2.4%. Another quarter like that or worse is the economics technical definition of a Recession, but why assume it will stop there? Trump is experimenting with radical changes to every aspect of American life, and the continuous body blows his tariffs keep delivering to our economy are so unprecedented, economists have no basis for forecasting how badly it will be hurt. Every researcher knows that experimenting in real time with untested theories considered irresponsible by most experts is insane.

Theories should to be tested in laboratory settings, not risking the lives and health of 350 million people. The Great Depression transformed America virtually overnight. In 1931, the Hoover administration assured Americans that the 1929 disaster was over, and things were recovering. But the underpinnings of the economy had been badly weakened, and when markets crashed even worse later that year, it didn’t take long for Americans to be waiting in bread lines. No one imagined that in 1932, but once bitten, as the saying goes. What Trump is doing could easily spiral out of control, with America on the losing end.

CNN’s Elisabeth Buchwald addressed this issue this morning. She explained that the contraction of 0.3% in our GDP may be greatly understated, and our economy might be far weaker than the numbers imply. The first quarter ended on March 31^st, so the decline in GDP didn’t count April, when when financial market were out of control. Buchwald points out that Trump telegraphed his intentions the day he was inaugurated, although no one, not even Trump knew how large the tariffs would be. The result was stocking up, a euphemism for panic buying used by economists.

Trump’s tariffs, if they’re not rescinded, will not only trigger a new open-ended course of inflation, but many corporations predict that if Trump doesn’t immediately change course, the country will see COVID-like supply chain failures within weeks. Even the dimmest Americans remember what it was like to run out of toilet paper, so both individual consumers and corporate buyers “stocked up” in anticipation of both price hikes and supply shortages.

As a result of both factors, imports rose 51% in the first quarter. That’s a remarkable number, mostly because it’s as artificial as its positive impact on GDP growth – thus the conclusion that things may be much worse than they appear. We didn’t increase our imports by half. We bought well ahead of demand out of concern that we would be importing far less after tariffs took effect. Buchwald quoted Ernst & Young’s Chief Economist Gregory Daco, who said the data was largely emblematic of “an artificial pull-forward in demand — and what often lies beyond these pull-forward effects is a cliff.”

It’s too early to scream, “The sky is falling,” but that doesn’t mean it isn’t. In 1931, no one predicted the depth of the Great Depression that followed the second crash. No one’s predicting it now, but no one imagined the assassination of an Austrian Duke could trigger a world war, and possibly two. We’d be fools to ignore the warning klaxons going off everywhere. It’s not just America’s economy that’s at stake. If Trump doesn’t find an off-ramp for his insane policies, the worst case will be another world-wide Depression; the best case is that China will sign trade deals with our former allies (whom we’re also screwing) that will leave us with whatever is leftover when the dust settles.

Who will ever trust America again after this? When the most powerful country in the world is governed by people who have no respect for truth of the rule of law, why would any country make a significant investment in whether we keep our promises, because that’s what treaties and trade agreement are – promises. I trust everyone I meet until they show me I can’t. If the world views us that way, we’re in serious trouble.