Tariffs, Inflation, Job Loss— This Is The Trump Economy So Get Used To The Wreckage

Trump Promised Greatness But Delivered $6 Ground Chuck

"Big Beautiful Golden Deal" by Nancy Ohanian

You may have noticed that yesterday the jittery stock market took a 542 point haircut (down 1.23%). That’s not that big of a deal… not as a stand alone. But it isn’t a stand alone. An increasingly hollowed out economy may be finally starting to catch up with Señor TACO. Job growth wasn’t just turgid; it’s been misreported and was actually crappy all year. “Americans,” wrote Emily Peck, “know a stinker when they’re living with it. Job growth was anemic in July, worse than previously realized for the past few months, according to the closely watched Labor Department data released Friday. The numbers surprised the markets. Only 106,000 jobs were added to the economy over the last three months— the lowest since 2020, when the pandemic cratered employment. The resilient labor market was a "mirage.” Trump’s response, predictably, <> was to blame the chief statistician and fire her<> while slamming Biden, who, it turnout, was much better at job creation than Trump has been.

Reports of a white-collar recession, and tales of professionals' struggles to land jobs have been growing.

CEOs have been talking about workers being replaceable all year — a sign that they're not in desperate need of employees.

Workers' pay expectations have been diminishing, too. The lowest wage Americans would be willing to accept for a new job fell sharply this year to $74,236 from a record high $82,135 in 2024.

I’m mostly a vegan but I eat some fish. I think there last time I had beef was in the mid-1960s. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel sorry for the families that are finding that since Trump has taken over, the price has skyrocketed— “surpassing $6 per  pound for the first time since data collection started in the 1980s… [E]xperts say significant price relief could be years away.” That doesn’t sound good… at all soft job Markey paired with inflationary pressures. Soon Trump may be hoping the Epstein scandal is back on the front pages!

Oh, and those tariffs! Ben Berkowitz reported that Señor TACO’s new rates— the ones he announced Thursday night— “are the highest in nearly a century and will cost the average family about $2,400 this year... Combined with the surprisingly weak jobs report Friday morning, it's the latest sign that American households face a much more difficult economy in the months to come… There are already signs that inflation is creeping higher as tariffs pile up, even before the latest levies go into effect.”

Let’s translate that into politics. Randy Bryce is challenging weak Republican incumbent in a southeast Wisconsin swing district. Bryce has a good shot of beating Bryan Steil and Thursday night showed why. Steil was roundly booed at an Elkhorn town hall (Walworth County, by far the reddest in the district, comfortably won by Steil last year with 63% ) when he tried defending Trump’s tariff agenda. Steil was pressed on other kitchen table issues he was ill-prepared to talk about, especially his vote to gut Medicaid.

On Friday, Paul Krugman called the jobs report “a shocker” and noted that the root cause iss the tariff agenda, “or more precisely the uncertainty that his erratic tariff policy has created... Not just high tariffs, but unpredictable tariffs. Since April 2 nobody (probably Trump included) has had [any] idea what tariff rates will be for the next few months, let alone for the long term… [T]his uncertainty was a huge deterrent to business investment. Build a factory based on the assumption that tariffs will go back down to more normal levels, and you risk having a stranded investment if 20-25 percent tariffs are here to stay. Build a factory based on the assumption that high tariffs are the new normal, and you’ll have a stranded investment if Trump chickens out. So many of us predicted an economic slowdown caused not by the level of tariffs but by uncertainty.”

These numbers don’t show the long-run damage from Trump’s tariffs, which are really a completely different story. In fact, the short-run jobs picture may improve now that it’s clear that there won’t be any real trade deals, just Smoot-Hawley redux as far as the eye can see.

One thing is clear: The previously reported good numbers were proof of Trump’s brilliance. Now that they’ve been revised away, the bad numbers are clearly Biden’s fault, or maybe Jerome Powell’s, or Barack Obama’s.

Trump and the Republicans like to pose as champions of the working class, but every time they get near the controls, they steer the economy into a ditch… and then scream that someone else was driving. What we’re seeing now is the reality of Trump’s return to power: tariffs that function like a tax on ordinary families, a softening job market hidden behind manipulated statistics and inflationary pressures that disproportionately squeeze the very people Trump and the GOP claim, unconvincingly, to fight for in an economic agenda that is more like a tantrum than a solid plan of accomplishment. His regime’s erratic economic direction is driving up household costs while depressing wages and crushing consumer confidence. 

It’s not about production or prosperity; when it’s not about punishment, it’s about posturing. Whether it’s tariffs that make goods more expensive or attacks on government statisticians who won’t lie for him or firing people who deliver bad news, Trump governs by grievance, not by growth. Under his leadership, uncertainty is the only certainty, and markets are waking up to that. 

In that environment, business pulls back, workers lose bargaining power and wages stagnate. The only people who reliably win? Billionaires, monopolists and campaign donors— many of whom have bet on deregulation, tax cuts and chaos. Everyone else is left holding the bag, wondering why their grocery bills are skyrocketing while their job offers vanish. So no, it’s not just one bad jobs report or one market dip or one town hall where a statistician got booed for defending a disastrous tariff policy. It’s a pattern, a warning, a test of whether Americans will again mistake bluster for competence. Trump broke the economy once— and now he’s well on the way to doing it again— only worse.

Businesses are starting to pass along the costs of Trump’s tariffs along to consumers, accerbating the cost of living crisis and driving inflation. According to CNN this morning, the goods with the worst prospects for immediate price increases include computers, clothes, watches, shoes, alcohol (including wine), furniture and toys. What about avocados?