CARTOON: The 'Donald J. Trump Recession” Is On The Way, Says Economist
"Donald Trump is threatening us with a recession, not because of something that is any way unavoidable, but rather because as president he has the power to bring on a recession."
"Even before this Trump slump, only the richest 10% of Americans had enough purchasing power to keep the economy going with their spending. The bottom 90%—including most Trump voters—were barely getting by. The next eighteen months could be rough on millions of people.”
Cartoons by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink
By Jake Johnson
Common Dreams (3/10/25)
As U.S. financial markets continued their downward spiral on Monday amid rapidly mounting concerns about the impacts of President Donald Trump's erratic and destructive tariff policies, one economist argued that the president has almost single-handedly engineered economic conditions that could result in a recession in the near future.
"Past recessions have been the result of policy errors or disasters," Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote Monday. "The most typical policy error is when the Federal Reserve Board raises interest rates too much to counter inflation. That was clearly the story in the 1974-75 recession as well as the 1980-82 double-dip recession."
"Then we have recessions caused by collapsing financial bubbles, the 2001 recession following the collapse of the stock bubble and the 2008-09 recession following the collapse of the housing bubble. And of course, we had the 2020 recession because of the Covid pandemic," he added. "But now Donald Trump is threatening us with a recession, not because of something that is any way unavoidable, but rather because as president he has the power to bring on a recession."
Baker pointed specifically to Trump's decision to impose sweeping tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China, which the economist estimates will cost Americans roughly $2,000 per household as companies push the costs of the tariffs onto consumers in the form of higher prices.
Retaliatory measures are also likely to inflict pain on Americans: On Monday, Ontario announced it would charge 25% more for the electricity it provides to Minnesota, New York, and Michigan in response to Trump's tariffs on Canadian imports, a move that's expected to hike electricity bills significantly for ratepayers in those states.
China, meanwhile, hit back at Trump Monday with an additional 15% tariff on U.S. farm products, including chicken, pork, soybeans, and beef.
Widespread confusion
Trump's tariff policies, and the widespread confusion surrounding their implementation, have sparked a sell-off on Wall Street and broader fears about the state of the U.S. economy as the labor market shows signs of stalling and consumer confidence plunges.
"While a recession may not be fully baked into the cards at this point, the risk is evident and it's almost entirely coming from Donald Trump's policies," Baker argued, noting that while the recession threat is "first and foremost" driven by tariffs, they "are just one possible route."
"The other is Elon Musk's DOGE team attack on the government. If there was ever any doubt, it is now clear that this outfit has nothing to do with increasing government efficiency," Baker wrote. "The direct impact of Musk's job cuts on both the budget and the economy is likely to be small. The bigger impact is the uncertainty they have created in large sectors of the economy."
"In short, Donald Trump has good reasons for telling us that his MAGA policies might give us a recession," he added. "It's hard to know how bad this recession would be, but it will definitely be the 'Donald J. Trump recession.'"
"Will the Trump slump turn into a recession? How will Trump lie and cheat his way out of it? Stay tuned."
Baker's assessment came a day after Trump declined to rule out the possibility of an economic recession in the U.S. this year and downplayed the effects of his tariffs, claiming without a shred of evidence that they will make the country "so rich you're not going to know where to spend all that money."
Trump previously insisted that the U.S. stock sell-off was attributable not to his chaotic tariff announcements, but to "globalists that see how rich our country is going to be and they don't like it."
Bottom falling out
Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote Monday that just seven weeks after Trump's inauguration, "the bottom is falling out" of the U.S. economy.
"Stocks are plunging. Treasury yields are falling. Consumer confidence is dropping. Inflation is picking up," Reich wrote. "The cost of living—the single biggest problem identified by consumers over the last several years—is going up, not down. Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum, and his threatened 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, are playing havoc with supply chains inside and outside America."
"Even before this Trump slump, only the richest 10% of Americans had enough purchasing power to keep the economy going with their spending. The bottom 90%—including most Trump voters—were barely getting by. The next eighteen months could be rough on millions of people," he continued. "Will the Trump slump turn into a recession? How will Trump lie and cheat his way out of it? Stay tuned."
Common Dreams work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Tell Sen. Schumer To Follow The Constitution & Do His Job: Free Mahmoud Khalil NOW!
Editor’s Note: You can make this most effective by adding a note at the top stating you agree with the note below and then write a short message of your own. If you have left the Democratic Party or voted third party because of it’s support of the US/Israel genocide, be sure to mention that. — Mark Taylor
This weekend, the Trump administration abducted and disappeared Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian Columbia University student activist and permanent resident, for protesting the Israeli military’s genocidal assault on his people.
Plainclothes DHS agents seized Mahmoud as he was returning home with his wife, who is eight months pregnant, and is reportedly holding him in a detention center in Louisiana.
This is a blatant attack on Mahmoud’s constitutional rights — and a direct impact of Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power against his political opponents.
Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University / Seth Harrison, The Journal News via USA TODAY Network
In one of his first acts as president, Trump signed an executive order targeting foreign college students and immigrants who protest Israel’s assault on Gaza with deportation and repression.
The Trump administration targeted Mahmoud Khalid because he spoke out for Palestinian human rights. His abduction is them carrying out their promise to destroy any opposition to their fascist, white supremacist worldview.
It’s all part of the Project Esther strategy: an explicit plan to dismantle civil society, starting with the Palestinian rights movement, while cynically claiming it’s in the name of Jewish safety.
Let’s be perfectly clear: abducting students for political speech doesn’t keep Jews safe — it actively endangers us and all of our neighbors.
This is an all-hands-on-deck moment. If we don’t strongly oppose this dystopian crackdown on freedom of expression, any of Trump’s political opponents could be next: advocates for reproductive justice, climate action, trans rights, immigrant rights, and other progressive causes.
We will only find safety by joining together with all who are targeted by the Trump-Musk agenda to resist it. Now is the time to speak out and act — for Mahmoud and for all of us.
When we say never again, we mean never again for ANYONE!
Send an email to Sen. Chuck Schumer right now demanding he take action to free Mahmoud Khalil.
Thank you,
The IfNotNow team
Targeting Legal Residents Is A Threat To ALL: Are American Citizens Next?
An accusation of being anti-American and posing a threat to national security can be levied against even citizens who are exercising their first Amendment rights. That’s what could be next.
By Ken Kleppenstein (3/10/25)
ICE’s arrest of a Columbia University protester on Sunday marks Donald Trump’s opening of a new front in his war on the domestic “enemy” within.
Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate who is married to a U.S. citizen, is a green card holder, making him a “lawful” permanent resident of the United States. By going after a lawful resident, Trump is expanding his war on the many supposed threats besieging America. The arrest goes well beyond Trump’s usual fixations, illegal immigrants or even foreign student visa holders. He is now just one step away from going after all Americans, trying to create precedent that protest and free speech is itself criminal.
“This is the first arrest of many to come,” Trump said today, referring to the arrest.
On social media, Trump labeled Khalil “a radical foreign pro-Hamas student” who has engaged in “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.”
The government is not alleging that Khalil provided “material support” to Hamas or other terrorist group, the usual claim. They instead assert a vague national security justification. In other words, the Trump White House doesn’t like what Khalil said.
Criminalizing Khalil’s views endangers all Americans. Trump’s elastic view of “anti-American” activity is ever expanding. Left unchecked, all protesting students and others, including Americans, could be criminalized too.
There are actually more lawful permanent residents in the U.S. (13.9 million) than people living here without legal status (11.4 million), according to the most recent official data from the Department of Homeland Security. In this sense, the arrest represents a greater threat to foreigners living in the U.S. than any of the administration’s previous actions.
Free speech attacks is the real threat to national interests
“Your presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests,” Trump says of Khalil and any similar protesters, suggesting that they are “paid agitators.”
The Trump administration is framing the arrest as an implementation of the president’s executive order on combating anti-semitism. The order authorizes federal agencies to “monitor for and report activities by alien students” who might be violating the civil rights of Jewish students. Such reports, the order continues, can lead “to investigations and, if warranted, actions to remove such aliens.”
A State Department spokesperson tells Zeteo’s Prem Thakker that "in general, the department has broad authority to revoke visas … under the Immigration and Nationality Act,”; and that the department “exercise[s] that authority when information comes to light at any time indicating that a visa holder may be inadmissible to the United States or otherwise ineligible for a visa.”
In response to Trump’s executive order, the Justice Department on February 3 created a multi-agency task force to “root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses,” according to its press release.
RFK Jr’s hate speech
The federal frenzy going on in the background of Khalil’s arrest is epitomized by the baffling presence of the Department of Health and Human Services in the task force. Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. likens anti-semitism to a plague undermining public health. RFK’s statement has to be seen to be believed:
“Anti-Semitism — like racism — is a spiritual and moral malady that sickens societies and kills people with lethalities comparable to history’s most deadly plagues…In recent years, the censorship and false narratives of woke cancel culture have transformed our great universities into greenhouses for this deadly and virulent pestilence. Making America healthy means building communities of trust and mutual respect, based on speech freedom and open debate.”
The news media reporting on Khalil has largely missed the important point of the arrest. The AP reported, as an example, in its headline and lead paragraph that Khalil is a “Palestinian activist,” insinuating some kind of nefarious link to Hamas. It then goes on to quote a homeland security spokesperson saying that Khalil “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio also got in on the act, tweeting that the administration “will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”
Supporters? By declining to allege any kind of material support to Hamas, Rubio is saying that any speech the government considers “support” is enough to get you a visit from ICE.
What could happen next
I’m not a lawyer, but the law seems pretty clear that a green card holder can only be deported if they violate rules relating to their status, conduct a serious crime, or commit espionage, terrorist, or pose a “threat” to “national security.” That’s a huge and vague category, national security. An accusation of being anti-American and posing a threat to national security can be levied against even citizens who are exercising their first Amendment rights. That’s what could be next.
“This arrest of this individual is … a deterrent” against anti-semitism on college campuses, Leo Terrell told Fox News. He is senior counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and head of the anti-semitism task force.
“This is the beginning of a series of victories,” he said.
The national security state has been spying on student protesters for months, as I reported last year, after learning that the National Counterterrorism Center was beefing up its intelligence collection of domestic “extremists.” The House Homeland Security Committee even nudged the intelligence and law enforcement agencies about establishing “undercover employees, online covert employees, or confidential sources” to spy on college protesters.
When FBI Director Kash Patel vowed to undertake the “world’s largest manhunt” against “anyone that wishes to do harm to our way of life,” I wrote that Gaza war protesters would be targets. Well, here we are.
Criminalizing Khalil’s views endangers all Americans. Trump’s elastic view of “anti-American” activity is ever expanding. Left unchecked, all protesting students and others, including Americans, could be criminalized too.
Ontario just re-elected Premier Doug Ford but, rather than play the tariff game l wish he'd just switched off the power. And Premier David Eby can halt BC's water sharing agreement too.
The Orange King of Chaos says he doesn't want anything from us so fine, f*** around and find out.
It might seem like Trump is destroying the economy willy-nilly with no rhyme nor reason, but I think there's a plan behind the chaos. Once everything has been devalued and various industries have crashed, then come the investors who will snatch up these almost dead businesses for next to nothing. It's just another form of wealth distribution for billionaires and wannabes. At the end of the day, the rich will be richer and the rest of us will be poorer. More reasons to #EatTheRich