According to a new report the US economy shrank by 0.3% over the first three months of the year – the first drop in three years
Donald Trump has blamed the US economy tanking after his mad tariff plan on Joe Biden, somehow.
According to a new report the US economy shrank by 0.3% over the first three months of the year – the first drop in three years.
Economists put this down to a surge in imports in the early part of the year as firms in the US tried to bring in foreign goods before Trump imposed massive tariffs.
Stock markets tumbled again following the report’s publication, with the Dow Jones tumbling 400 points and the S&P 500 dropping 1.5%.
But despite most experts putting the blame on Trump’s chaos, the US president and convicted felon insisted in a Truth Social post that it was nothing to do with him.
“This is Biden’s stock market, not Trump’s,” he wrote. “I didn’t take over until January 20th. Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers.
“Our country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden “Overhang.” This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad number, but when the boom begins it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!”
But when more positive figures were published on January 29, 2024 – a year before he took office – he posted on Truth Social: “THIS IS THE TRUMP STOCK MARKET BECAUSE MY POLLS AGAINST BIDEN ARE SO GOOD THAT INVESTORS ARE PROJECTING THAT I WILL WIN AND THAT WILL DRIVE THE MARKET UP.”
Many economists say that Trump’s massive import taxes – the erratic way he’s rolled them out – will hurt growth in the second half of the year and that recession risks are rising.
“We think the downturn of the economy will get worse in the second half of this year,” wrote Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics.
“Corrosive uncertainty and higher taxes – tariffs are a tax on imports – will drag GDP growth back into the red by the end of this year.”
Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said: “100 days into his presidency, Donald Trump’s red-light, green-light tariffs are shrinking our economy, with businesses stockpiling imports in anticipation of tariff doomsday.″