2025, April 1 - April 7

Recession Is Back?

President Trump claimed that the US Economy is currently a sick patient and his tariffs are the new cure. “Tariffs are my favorite word in the English dictionary,” he said.

This Sunday, Elon Musk said he hoped for a tariff free relationship with Europe and making a “freedom of trade zone” in the future. He advised the president stating "If people wish to work in Europe or wish to work in North America, they should be allowed to do so in my view." Suspecting it relates to Tesla’s employment future, President Trump however, announced the new numbers of “Liberation Day.” Trump would impose a 20% tariff on imports from the European Union and a 34% tariff on Chinese goods, raising his total new levies on China to 54%. Other Asian countries like Japan face 24% and South Korea has 25%. BBC news stated that The White House said that changes had been made to take currency manipulation and bureaucratic red tape into consideration. And upon closer examination, the first complex equation turned out to be a straightforward indicator of the amount of that nation's goods trade surplus with the United States. They divided the scale of the trade deficit by the imports.

Reports say that at least $6 Trillion had been lost over the past few months from US stocks bottoming along with foreign trade. The Republican party still doesn’t seem to be bothered by this because theoretically these tariffs will only benefit the US Government. According to a Wall Street Journal survey, three quarters of respondents said they expected tariffs to cause more inflation, and 54% of voters said they disapproved of Trump's tariff policy. Compared to those who said they approved of the president's overall economic management, 52% of respondents said they disapproved of it. This shows that most people, even some Republicans disagree with these tariffs. However, since the President thinks this will make an “economic powerhouse” the only headline reads that recession is back.

Based on a car podcast made by youtuber Doug DeMuro, I personally found his take on price increases very interesting: The difference between the COVID rescission and 2025, is the fact that car dealers used to markup the price for their own profit but now the government is raising the prices. This ultimately means that the American people no longer benefit and instead the government does.

[Personal Opinion]: I think so far, this fear created in not only the US economy but in essentially all the nations that are getting taxed, will only drive the stock market down. But just because the tariffs get canceled does not mean the prices will magically go back up. This will cause uncertainty for the government, and the US will become the blame. Instead the tariffs will have to cool down from the extreme conditions that evidently most people dislike. This again does not mean that tariffs should go away because the US Government will be the heart of trade as more and more countries will either pay taxes to help the national debt and raise FED cuts[according to the President], or invest in US based manufacturing plants.