Welcome to the Recession, will it be a Depression? Entry for April 3rd 2025

 April 3rd 2025

This was public sentiment in Canada in mid March

Where does one even start when the most powerful man on earth decides that starting a bad recession is the right thing to do?

It is not just one thing but a multitude of things Trump is doing that causing a recession:

• The dramatic rise in taxes on Americans will drop the growth in their economy
• Ongoing uncertainty on what the American Administration will do, about anything
• Incompetence in the senior staff of the administration
• A fall is US exports
• A dramatic drop in tourism 
• More inflation - the huge tariffs on China will raise the prices of everyday goods in places like WalMart buy 30% to 50%
• Layoffs - they are already happening today and will increase a lot among car manufacturers.  This will lead to rising unemployment
• Loss of arms sales
• Falling oil prices
• Flight of capital - investors are moving their money out of the US because they are not sure what will happen next
• The flight of highly educated people to other countries
• Global shift away from dealing with the US
• Lower consumer spending
• Higher taxes on the bottom 95% of the population

Each of the items above could put a weak economy into a recession.  Two or three of them would put an okay economy.  With all of these things happening at once, the US economy will be determined to be in a recession now in the fall when the data is in.  

In 2008/09, the US caused a global recession because of its badly managed housing mortgage system. This recession is going to be many times worse.  

With a recession started, we will see:

• Rising unemployment
• A fall in capital for projects
• Mortgage foreclosures
• Business bankruptcies
• Personal bankruptcies
• A fall in government revenues
• Falling exports
• Rising interest rates due to inflation
• Falling housing prices making people feel much poorer
• Falling stock prices making people feel poorer and causing problems with retirement

These factors will all make the recession a much worse one.  So how bad?

This is a very hard thing to estimate because we have never seen the President of the United States deliberately cause an economic meltdown. Here aser my estimates through to the end of 2025:

•  US unemployment 11% to 15% this is based on the early 80s recession, 2008/09 and COVID.  
• Fall in the US GDP between 5% and 10%

OK, this is officially very depressing for me, time to stop writing for today. There are more things that will happen with a bad US recession.

I only added this pic of Bernie because
dogs make things better