Well Trump paused the tariffs at 10% for 90 days and the economy improved! (unless it involves China and its 125% tariffs)
The economy will be damaged at least for a generation. The rest of the world has woken up to the fact that the US is untrustworthy. You can't rely on a single thing it says or agreement it has made. It is all complete garbage now. Integrating economically with the US is now a national security risk, no country will do it, and any country that has already done it is now planning an escape route.
The rule of law is also eroding. Companies can be targeted for retribution by the government for not sufficiently supporting that government or opposing that government. Major companies must be politically aligned with the government or be punished through capricious and illegal means. They can also now be extorted to enrich the regime in power.
The US' outright hostility to the global economic order and set of international laws it created also means holding dollars and US treasuries is now a risky bet. The inability to tackle the national debt in a serious way, the outright hostility to allies, the lawlessness, inconsistent and unpredictable policy, unilateral punishment of foes and allies alike, the breaking of past agreements and norms produces a collapse of confidence and a spike in uncertainty.
The US economy and the global economic order the US has spent the last 80 years building, allowing it to become the wealthiest and most productive economy in history has been punched in the heart and is now experiencing shock. There is high risk that the heart will continue to be punched and may one day stop beating.
The end result will be a loss of US dollar reserve currency status. US treasuries will no longer have the gold standard of reliability and trust it had earned over decades to receive. The US will no longer be able to influence a global trading system to its advantage to nearly the degree it had in previous decades, the rest of the world will move on and try its best to ignore what the US wants, something that had been unthinkable until now.
The end result will be higher interest rates, a weaker dollar, lower investment, lower productivity, lower wages, and an even more painful set of compromises that will need to be made to make the federal debt sustainable, meaning a combination of steeper tax increases and much fewer government services, and probably higher inflation and unemployment as well. A poorer country with crippled influence on the world stage.
And it didn't have to be this way. The right wing narrative would have you believe this had already occured or was inevitable. A bunch of lies that they turnrd into a reality with their horrific world view and terrible policy. Just 5 months ago the economist declared the US economy the envy of the world. Growth was comparatively strong, at the top of the industralized world. Economic production was the highest in world history for a nation, wealth had never been greater, productivity was strong and also in the top tier on the world stage. Production, wealth and high productivity expand the solution set to handle problems, both domestic and international. And it was all thrown away based on lies, disinformation, and the cult of one deranged, psycopathic, narcissistic rapist.
The narrative that the US has been screwed by the world order it created is absurd and laughable to the highest degree, when the exact opposite is true. In a rational world, anyone suggesting it would be laughed at and mocked. But we don't live in that world. We live in an idiocracy.
