Justin Wolfers

These are tremendously unpopular tariffs.

And at a time where people are worried about affordability, and he said that on day one he was going to bring down prices, and instead what he did is redistributed from the poor to the rich, added tariffs, let Obamacare subsidies expire, undermined the Fed, he's done anything but address the affordability crisis.

I'm also an American by the way.

Let me start.

You just said I've heard this enormous range of commentary.

I don't think that's true, actually.

You've heard the president say that we're off the charts.

Great.

When lying liars lie, I tend to think, you know, I'm just going to like pretend he never spoke because when you don't speak truth, you don't deserve a seat at my table.

Yep.

So what we have is a range from people who really believe it's quite healthy to people who believe we're on the cusp of a recession.

All of those things might be true.

let me give you a few ways of thinking about this.

So first of all, the economy at the beginning of 2025, beginning of the Trump term, was in pretty good shape.

To be clear, this is not a partisan remark, the economy in 2019 on the eve of the pandemic, so during the first Trump term, was in pretty good shape.

So in each case, you know, things can go okay.

Unemployment was low.

Inflation was a bit high and we might want it, but was edging back down to where the Fed wanted it.

So that's what the president inherited.

And the good thing about economies is they move slowly.