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On this episode of Trumponomics, we’re checking in on the status of Donald Trump’s trade war. Host Stephanie Flanders is joined by Anna Wong, chief US economist at Bloomberg Economics, for insight into the economic impact of the US president’s policies so far, and Bloomberg White House Reporter Josh Wingrove, who unpacks how the strategy is evolving. They analyze the legal battle over Trump’s tariffs and concern on Wall Street that the trade war could morph into a capital war.
When it comes to the economic data, Wong points out that although the expectation is tariffs will eventually reignite US inflation, general pessimism in the US economy is—at least for now—translating into lower demand of discretionary goods. And when it comes to how much damage to the US economy Trump’s tariffs have caused, distorted import activity has made it more difficult to determine. In other words, it’s too early to tell.
“Trump has a sense of how hard to push the economy and he tends to pull back from the brink if things get really bad,” says Wong, who worked in Trump’s first administration on his White House Council of Economics Advisers. “At this moment the hard data are not causing them to wanna pull back.”
