Evelyn Reynolds

President Trump escalated his fight with Canada on Tuesday, threatening to double tariffs on steel and aluminum imports and pressing to turn one of America’s closest traditional allies into the 51st state. After several tense hours, both sides backed down, at least for now.It was the latest in a week of chaotic trade moves, in which the president startled investors and businesses that depend on trade and clashed with some of the country’s closest trading partners.In a post on his social media platform Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump wrote that Canadian steel and aluminum would face a 50 percent tariff, double what he plans to charge on metals from other countries beginning Wednesday. He said the levies were in response to an additional charge that Ontario had placed on electricity coming into the United States, which was in turn a response to tariffs Mr. Trump imposed on Canada last week.By Tuesday afternoon, leaders had begun to relent. The premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, said he would suspend the electricity surcharge, and Mr. Trump said at the White House he would “probably” reduce the tariff on Canadian metals.Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said Tuesday afternoon that Mr. Trump’s threats had succeeded in getting Canada to back down. “President Trump has once again used the leverage of the American economy, which is the best and biggest in the world, to deliver a win for the American people,” he said.As a result, he said that Canada would face the same 25 percent tariff on metals as all of America’s trading partners will when they go into effect at midnight. More

American farmers could ultimately feel even more pain as a result of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China.
The latest Purdue University/CME Group Ag Economy Barometer reading showed that almost half of farmers think a trade war leading to a significant decrease in U.S. agricultural exports is “likely” or “very likely.”
The February sentiment data comes amid worries among experts that farmers won’t be as profitable in 2025.

Soy farmer Caleb Ragland on his farm in Magnolia, Kentucky
Courtesy: American Soybean Association

Caleb Ragland, a soybean farmer in Magnolia, Ky., voted for President Donald Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024. Now, however, he has to navigate a tariff minefield at a time when the sector is already facing major headwinds.
Ragland works with his wife and three sons and has deep roots in the community. His family has been farming on the land for more than two centuries. But over the past few years, he has seen a double-digit percentage decline in crop prices while production costs rise. Soybean futures have gone down more than 40% over the past three years along with corn futures.

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Soybean futures vs. corn futures since 2022

As pressures mount in the industry as a result of tariffs imposed by the second Trump administration — as well as retaliatory levies from other countries — he’s worried about the longevity of his business.
“My sons potentially could be the 10th generation if they’re able to farm,” Ragland, who is also the president of the American Soybean Association, told CNBC. “And when you have policies that are completely out of our control – that they manipulate our prices 20%, 30%, and on the flip side, our costs go up – we won’t be able to stay in business.”
This isn’t the first time farmers have had to deal with new tariffs. Back in Trump’s first term, the trade war with China in 2018 — a time when Ragland said the agricultural economy was “in a much better place than it is right now” — cost the U.S. agriculture industry more than $27 billion, and soybeans made up virtually 71% of annualized losses.
That trade war has caused lasting damage. To this day, the U.S. has yet to fully recover its loss in market share of soybean exports to China, the world’s number one buyer of the commodity, according to the ASA.
“Tariffs break trust,” Ragland said. “It’s a lot harder to find new customers than it is to retain ones that you already have.”

‘Insult to injury’

The White House last week imposed a 25% tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico alongside an additional 10% duty on Chinese imports.
While Trump soon reversed course by granting a one-month tariff delay for automakers Wednesday, then pausing tariffs a day later for some Canadian and Mexican goods until April 2, he said in an interview that aired Sunday on Fox News that tariffs “could go up” over time.
Tariffs on China were not included in these exemptions. China retaliated with levies of its own, which mainly target U.S. agricultural goods. Specifically, U.S. soybeans are now subject to an additional 10% tariff, while corn gets hit with an extra 15% charge.
“We’re already at the point that we’re unprofitable,” Ragland said. “Why on earth are we trying to add insult to injury for the ag sector by basically adding a tax?”
Ragland pointed out that he “appreciates the president’s ability to negotiate” and wants Trump to be successful for the sake of the country. However, he emphasized that those in the industry, especially soybean producers, don’t have any “elasticity in our ability to weather a trade war that takes away from our bottom line.”
“Folks are upset,” Ragland said about sentiment from other farmers, stressing that they all need relief through deals that reduce barriers to trade and a new five-year comprehensive farm bill – legislation that provides producers with key commodity support programs, among others. “You’re talking about people’s livelihoods,” he remarked.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said last week that the Trump administration was reportedly weighing exemptions on some agricultural products from tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Trump’s adjusted measures Thursday included a reduced 10% tariff on potash, which is used for fertilizer.
More than 80% of American farmers’ potash needs are supplied by Canada, said Ken Seitz of Nutrien – a crop inputs and services provider based in Canada – during the BMO Global Metals, Mining & Critical Minerals Conference last month.
“As we look at the implications of tariffs for Nutrien, of course the biggest discussion is around potash, and that’s because in a market that’s kind of 10 million to 11 million tons in any given year, we ourselves supply about 40% of that market,” the company’s chief executive underscored during the conference. “We believe that the cost of tariffs will be passed on to the U.S. farmer.”

Weighing the outcomes

Even in the runup to the implementation of Trump’s tariffs, American farmers were sounding the alarm. Despite the latest Purdue University/CME Group Ag Economy Barometer reading showing that farmer sentiment overall improved in February, 44% of survey respondents disclosed that month that trade policy will be most important to their farms in the next five years.

“Usually when you ask a policy question, by far and away the most important policy is crop insurance,” Michael Langemeier, agricultural economist at Purdue University, said. “Crop insurance is right up there with apple pie and baseball. It’s a program that’s very well liked, because it provides a very effective safety net.”
“The fact that crop insurance was a distant second to trade policy speaks volumes,” he also said.
The February survey also showed that almost 50% of farmers said that they think a trade war leading to a significant decrease in U.S. agricultural exports is “likely” or “very likely.” Langemeier estimated that between mid-February and early March, there was a 33% per acre drop in net return for soybeans and corn related to the tariffs. That’s on top of the fact that 2025 was “not ending up to be an extremely profitable year before this,” he revealed.

The economist thinks there may be a bit of a downward adjustment in overall farmer sentiment in the near term. Nevertheless, a constructive consequence of the tariffs could be that they speed up the signing of a new farm bill, he said.
“Well, how in the world can you come up with the amounts for the trade payments if you don’t even know what the amounts for the farm bill are going to be,” Langemeier asserted. He expects that the new farm bill signing will take place at some point this year.
Looking to the upcoming spring season, Bank of America analyst Steve Byrne wrote in a Feb. 25 note that tariffs could lead to “more conservative purchases of crop inputs.” That would mean a risk of lower fertilizer purchases, which could affect not only Nutrien but others like Mosaic and CF Industries, the analyst noted.
Shares of those companies, as well as other farming-related stocks like AGCO and Deere, all sold off on March 3 and March 4 on the heels of Trump’s tariff announcement.
“I think we’ve seen the ag stock sell-off just because of general concerns that the farmer is going to not be as profitable this year,” Morningstar’s Seth Goldstein said in an interview with CNBC.
Over the past month, Mosaic has slid almost 8%, while CF Industries has fallen nearly 10%. Nutrien has also lost more than 1%. AGCO and Deere have fared better in that time, gaining 1.7% and 0.3%, respectively.
When it comes to how this trade war will affect American farmers in the long term, Goldstein doesn’t see that meaningful of an impact. He anticipates that global trade flows will shift and cancel each other out over the next two to three years or so.
“While there may be a near-term impact this year of soybeans sitting in warehouses without really available buyers, I think eventually we would see other countries then start to buy more U.S. soybeans,” the equity strategist said. “Maybe China buys more soybeans from Brazil, but maybe a place like Europe then buys more soybeans from the U.S., and we get … not that much difference.”
As it stands, Brazil is forecast to be the world’s largest soybean producer ahead of the U.S. for the 2024/2025 marketing year, accounting for 40% of global production in the period, per the Department of Agriculture. For corn, on the other hand, the U.S. is forecast to be in the top spot, making up 31% of global production in the marketing year.
Others on Wall Street believe that tariffs will be more consequential on trade dynamics, however.
Kristen Owen, an analyst at Oppenheimer, predicts that the duties will likely solidify Brazil becoming the primary global producer for both corn and soy, whereas the U.S. will become a sort of incremental supplier to the world.
“Brazil specifically has more capacity to grow their acreage, more capacity to grow to increase their share of the global grain trade,” she said to CNBC. “Tariffs and some of the other decisions that the administration is making just accelerate some of that.” More

On Tuesday, President Trump sent markets into another tailspin by announcing additional tariffs on Canada, suggesting a falling stock market is no longer the bulwark investors had hoped.President Trump made a lot of promises on the campaign trail last year. Investors and business leaders enthusiastically cheered some, like lower taxes and relaxed regulation, and expressed wariness about others, like tariffs and reduced immigration.But when Mr. Trump won the election, there was little sign of that ambivalence: Stock prices soared, as did measures of business optimism.Investors at the time offered a simple explanation: They believed Mr. Trump, backed by a Republican-controlled Congress, would follow through on the parts of his agenda that they liked and scale back the more disruptive policies like tariffs if financial markets started to get spooked.It is increasingly clear they were wrong.In his first weeks in office, Mr. Trump has made tariffs the central focus of his economic policy, promising, and at times imposing, steep penalties on allies as well as adversaries. He has threatened to curb subsidies that businesses had come to rely on. And he has empowered Elon Musk’s efforts to slash the federal bureaucracy, potentially putting tens of thousands of federal workers out of jobs and cutting off billions of dollars in government grants and contracts.Most surprising, at least to the optimists on Wall Street: Mr. Trump has so far been undeterred by signs of cracks in the economy or by plunging stock prices.“The idea that the administration is going to be held back by a self-imposed market constraint should be discounted,” said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at the accounting firm RSM.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The consumer price index for February is forecast to show an increase of 0.3% for a broad array of goods and services across the U.S economy.
On an annual basis, that would put headline inflation at 2.9% and core inflation at 3.2%, moving lower but still above the Fed’s 2% target.

A person browses a grocery store following the announcement of tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods by U.S. President Donald Trump, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on March 4, 2025.
Arlyn Mcadorey | Reuters

With concerns running high that President Donald Trump’s tariff policies will aggravate inflation, a report Wednesday could deliver some mildly encouraging news.
The consumer price index for February is forecast to show an increase of 0.3% for a broad array of goods and services across the largest economy in the world. That projection holds both for the all-items measure and the core index that excludes volatile food and energy prices.

On an annual basis, that would put headline inflation at 2.9% and the core reading at 3.2%, both 0.1 percentage point lower than in January.
The good news is those rates represent a continuation of a steady but quite slow drawdown in the inflation rate over the past year. The bad news is that both also are still well above the Federal Reserve’s 2% goal, likely keeping the central bank on hold again when it meets next week.
“We expect broad-based deceleration, with weaker core goods and services,” Morgan Stanley economist Diego Anzoategui said in a note. “Why still elevated? For three reasons: (1) we expect used car prices rise because of past wildfires, (2) according to our analysis, certain goods and services show residual seasonality in February, and (3) we think supply constraints keep airfares inflation elevated in February.”
The big question now is where things head from here.
Trump’s tariff moves have stirred market worries of both rising inflation and slower economic growth. With Fed officials historically more attuned to the inflation side of the dual mandate for price stability and full employment, a prolonged period of high prices could put the Fed on the sidelines for longer.

However, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues have indicated that in their view, tariffs historically have been one-off price increases and not fundamental inflation drivers. If that’s also the case this time, policymakers might look through any price blips from trade policy and continue to lower rates, as markets are projecting this year.
Goldman Sachs economists expect the Fed to stay on hold until policy comes into clearer view, then likely lower the central bank’s benchmark lending rate by a half percentage point later this year.
“We see further disinflation in the pipeline from rebalancing in the auto, housing rental, and labor markets, though we expect offsets from catch-up inflation in healthcare and a boost from an escalation in tariff policy,” the firm said in a note.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the CPI report at 8:30 a.m. ET.

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The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey showed that postings rose to 7.74 million on the month, up 232,000 from December, slightly ahead of the 7.6 million forecast.
Quits, a measure of worker confidence in the ability to move to other jobs, moved higher to 3.27 million, an increase of 171,000.

Attendees and recruiters at a City Career Fair hiring event in Sacramento, California, US, on Thursday, Feb. 27, 2025. 
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Job openings increased in January, providing at least a momentary sign of stability as questions linger over the labor market, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday.
The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey showed that postings rose to 7.74 million on the month, up 232,000 from December and slightly ahead of the Dow Jones estimate for 7.6 million. The tally kept the ratio of openings to available workers around 1.1 to 1.

Much of the gain came from retail, which saw an increase of 143,000 available positions, while finance gained 122,000. Professional and business services saw a decrease of 122,000 and leisure and hospitality fell by 46,000.
Quits, a measure of worker confidence in the ability to move to other jobs, moved higher to 3.27 million, an increase of 171,000.
While job openings were increasing, hires and layoffs held basically flat. Actions to pare the federal government workforce by the newly created Department of Government Efficiency advisory board, led by Elon Musk, were not captured in the January data.
“For now, the labor market remains stable. But that’s just January,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter. “The February report will likely look very different: federal government openings will plunge, quits will spike, and layoffs could finally begin to rise. In other words, calm today, but turbulence ahead.”
The JOLTS data provides some positive news for a labor market that otherwise has shown signs of softening. Nonfarm payrolls gains in February came in a bit below market expectations, and a recent survey from Challenger, Gray & Christmas indicated a surge in layoff announcements during the month.

Most recently, job review site Glassdoor found employee confidence to be at the lowest in the history of the firm’s survey, going back to 2016.
Federal Reserve officials consider the JOLTS report an important indicator of labor market slack. The central bank is expected to keep its key lending rate anchored in a range between 4.25%-4.5% when it meets next week.

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As he prepares to introduce new tariffs on foreign metals this week, President Trump has vowed not to grant the types of exclusions and exemptions that were common during his first trade war.But he has already undercut that tough position on other tariffs. After lobbying from automakers, farmers and other industries, Mr. Trump quickly walked back the sweeping tariffs he had imposed on Tuesday on all imports from Canada and Mexico. By Thursday, he had suspended those tariffs indefinitely for all products that comply with the North American free trade deal, U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or U.S.M.C.A. — about half of all imports from Mexico and nearly 40 percent of those from Canada.That has given industries and foreign governments an opening to lobby the administration ahead of the metals tariffs, which go into effect at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, as well as other levies planned for April 2.Foreign officials have been pressing for exemptions for their steel and aluminum. In meetings in Washington on Monday, Japan’s trade minister was also expected to seek an exemption from tariffs on automobiles, which Mr. Trump has said are coming in April.Matt Blunt, president of the American Automotive Policy Council, a trade group representing U.S. automakers, said in a statement that Ford Motor, General Motors and Stellantis purchase the vast majority of their steel and aluminum in the United States or North America and were worried about the impact of the levies.The companies were reviewing and awaiting details of the proposed tariffs, but were “concerned” that levying them on Canada and Mexico would “add significant costs for our suppliers,” Mr. Blunt said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

With fears brewing over tariffs and jobs, President Donald Trump and his top lieutenants are acknowledging there could be some short-term pain for the economy and markets before it gets better.
“What I have to do is build a strong country,” the president said Sunday. “You can’t really watch the stock market.”
An emerging theme from the administration is that any slowdown or reversal in growth is a legacy from Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden.

President Donald Trump and other senior White House officials have spent the past several days bracing Americans for a potential economic slowdown that they say will then lead to stronger growth ahead.
With fears brewing over the potential tariff impact, the labor market slowing and indicators pointed toward possible negative growth in the first quarter, the president and his top lieutenants are projecting a mostly optimistic outlook tempered with warnings about near-term churning.

“There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big,” Trump said Sunday on the Fox News show “Sunday Morning Futures.” “We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing. … It takes a little time, but I think it should be great for us.”
Asked whether he thinks a recession is imminent, Trump said, “I hate to predict things like that.” He later added, “Look, we’re going to have disruption, but we’re OK with that.”

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he walks to board Marine One, while departing the White House en route to Florida, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 7, 2025. 
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

The comments come during a tumultuous period for markets, with stocks riding a continuing roller coaster depending on the news of the day. Major averages slid again Monday, with the most recent White House assurances doing little to assuage jangled market nerves.
While Trump used Wall Street as a continuous barometer of his progress during his first term in office, he discouraged making it a yardstick this time around.
“What I have to do is build a strong country,” he said. “You can’t really watch the stock market.”

‘A detox period’ from spending

An emerging theme from the administration is that any slowdown or reversal in growth is a legacy from Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, and his debt-and-deficit fueled stimulus. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has called for a “rebalancing” of the economy away from fiscal and monetary largesse.
“There’s going to be a natural adjustment as we move away from public spending to private spending,” Bessent said Friday on CNBC. “The market and the economy have just become hooked and we’ve become addicted to this government spending, and there’s going to be a detox period.”
That adjustment could come sooner rather than later.
The Atlanta Federal Reserve’s closely followed GDPNow gauge of incoming economic data is tracking a 2.4% decline in the growth rate for the first quarter. If it holds up — the measure can be volatile, particularly early in the quarter — it would be the first quarter to go negative in three years and the biggest retrenchment since the Covid pandemic.
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, in a Monday interview with CNBC, called the GDPNow outlook “a metric of the inheritance of President Biden” and “a very, very temporary phenomenon.”
“There are a lot of reasons to be extremely bullish about the economy going forward,” he said. “But for sure, this quarter, there are some blips in the data, including the negative GDPNow, which are related both to the Biden inheritance and to some timing effects that are happening ahead of tariffs.”
Speaking Sunday to NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said: “There’s going to be no recession in America. … If Donald Trump is bringing growth to America, I would never bet on recession, no chance.”

Worries about jobs and the consumer

One big mover for the Fed model was a surge in the trade deficit to a record $131.4 billion in January, in part the product of a jump in gold imports as well as companies stockpiling ahead of the tariffs.
However, there also are rising concerns about consumer spending following a pullback in January. Consumer activity accounts for more than two-thirds of GDP, so any further decline would be added cause for concern.
At the same time, a decent headline payrolls gain in February of 151,000 masked some underlying trouble spots for the economy.
While the commonly cited unemployment rate just nudged up to 4.1%, the so-called real rate that measures discouraged workers and those at work part time but would rather have full-time jobs soared to 8%, a half percentage point gain to the highest level since October 2021.
The increase came as rolls of those holding part-time jobs for economic reasons rose by 460,000, a 10% jump to the highest level since May 2021. Most of the move in the category came from those citing slack work or business conditions. Further, the level of those reporting at work full time slumped by 1.2 million while part-timers spiked by 610,000.
Market veteran Jim Paulsen, a former economist and strategist with Wells Fargo and other firms, noted in a Substack post that the labor market is approaching “stall speed” and that the gains in the real unemployment rate are consistent with a recession, though that’s not necessarily his forecast.
The rise, he wrote, “highlights increasing stress in the U.S. jobs market. Moreover, this is yet another indicator which will fan recession fears among investors and boost worries about a potential bear market.”
Few economists on Wall Street are expecting a recession. Goldman Sachs, for instance, cut its GDP outlook for 2025 to 1.7%, down half a percentage point from the previous forecast, while nudging up the 12-month recession probability to just 20%, from 15%.
Trump administration officials insist the current soft patch, including the tariff uncertainty, is part of a broader strategy.
“What we’re doing is we’re building a tremendous foundation,” Trump said on the Fox show.

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Global market volatility and geopolitical turbulence in the wake of President Donald Trump’s return to the White House have led to warnings that the U.S. economy could be heading for a recession.
Economists say Trump is proving to be an “agent of chaos” with his unpredictable trade tariff policies — but note that a downturn isn’t in the cards just yet.

U.S. President Donald Trump attends the White House Crypto Summit at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 7, 2025. 
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

Global market volatility and geopolitical turbulence in the wake of President Donald Trump’s return to the White House have led to warnings that the U.S. economy could be heading for a recession — but economists say that a downturn isn’t in the cards just yet.
“I don’t think we will talk about a U.S. recession. The U.S economy is resilient, I would say, largely despite Donald Trump,” Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Monday.

Dubbing Trump an “agent of chaos and confusion,” Schmieding said the president’s “zigzagging on tariffs shows that he has little idea of the potential consequences of his tariff policies.”
Nonetheless, “U.S. consumers have money to spend, [and] they probably will. The labor market in the U.S. remains reasonably firm, and with energy prices coming down a bit and probably some tax cuts and deregulation coming, I don’t think there’s an imminent recession risk,” according to Schmieding.

“But what is becoming ever clearer in the long run, Trump is hurting U.S. trend growth, that is growth in the years beyond 2026. And he stands for higher prices for U.S. consumers, which means, in my view, the Fed [Federal Reserve] has no reason to cut rates with Trump as president, and Trump sowing chaos and confusion,” he noted.
CNBC has contacted the White House for a response and is awaiting a reply.
International stock markets have been rocked to their foundations in recent weeks amid fears that Trump intended to revive a global trade war after announcing hard-hitting import tariffs on goods from China, Mexico and Canada.

Confusion and uncertainty have followed, as the president last Friday announced that there would be a reprieve and delay to April 2 on some tariffs on the U.S.’ neighbors and closest trading partners.
Trump’s unconventional approach to trade and international diplomacy has left markets unimpressed, with U.S. indexes whipsawing, while strategists warned that negative market sentiment was bound to continue in the Trump 2.0 era. U.S. stock futures fell earlier Monday morning, indicating another rocky ride for American markets at the start of the new trading week.

Business leaders and economists have voiced concerns that tariffs will lead to further inflationary pressures on the U.S., with consumers likely to bear the brunt of higher prices on imported goods.
They also warn that investment, jobs and growth could suffer, as consumers tighten their belts and hunker down to wait out a period of economic unpredictability and potential “stagflation” marked by high inflation and high unemployment.
That would put pressure on the Fed to keep interest rates on hold, rather than cutting from their current benchmark rate in a range between 4.25%-4.5%, in a bid to stimulate the economy. Lower interest rates can fuel more spending, and, in turn, inflation.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell on Friday said that the central bank can wait to see how Trump’s aggressive policy actions play out before it moves again on interest rates.

‘A period of transition’

Recent economic data showing consumer confidence has taken a hit in February will be food for thought for the Trump administration. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s GDPNow tracker of incoming metrics also indicated last week that the U.S. gross domestic product could shrink by 2.4% for the period between January and March. A technical recession is defined as taking place when at least two consecutive quarters log negative growth.
Last week’s jobs data also showed that while the U.S. labor market is still expanding, signs of weakness could also be starting to creep in. Nonfarm payrolls data indicated employment growth was weaker than expected in February and while jobs growth is still stable, the data comes amid Trump’s efforts to cut the federal workforce.
Nonfarm payrolls increased by a seasonally adjusted 151,000 on the month, exceeding the downwardly revised 125,000 of January, but coming in below the 170,000 consensus forecast from Dow Jones, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. The unemployment rate edged higher to 4.1%.
TS Lombard’s chief U.S. economist, Steven Blitz, said the latest jobs data “tell us the economy continues to grow” and did not signal “increased recession risks created by the array of Trump’s policies.”
However, he said in a note Friday that “the sum of Trump’s actions can yet skew the economy in any which way, including an implosion of capital spending.”
“Keep in mind that presidents have been known to accept downturns in year one of their presidency. It is a free pass, they blame the previous president and take credit for the recovery. My base case is still growth and the Fed holding still. My base concern comes from the capital markets side, break trade and you will break the capital inflows that support the economy,” Blitz said.

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he walks to board Marine One, while departing the White House en route to Florida, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 7, 2025. 
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

Trump has refused to rule out the possibility of a recession this year, but insisted this weekend that the economy was in a “period of transition.”
Asked about the Atlanta Fed’s warning of an economic contraction on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Trump seemed to acknowledge that his tariff plans could affect U.S. growth.
“I hate to predict things like that,” he said in an interview aired Sunday, when asked if the recession warning was a concern.
“There is a period of transition because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing.” The White House leader added, “It takes a little time. It takes a little time.”
JPMorgan’s U.S. Market Intelligence unit last week noted that the U.S. economy was entering “another period of uncertainty” given the unpredictable nature of tariffs. The analysts said they were taking a “bearish” position on U.S. stocks, expecting markets to see more volatility and for U.S. growth to potentially “crater.”
“We have already seen the negative impact that policy/trade uncertainty has had on both household and corporate spending, so it seems likely that we see a larger magnitude of this over the next month. Keep an eye on the unemployment rate, layoffs, WARN notices, etc. If we start to see the unemployment rate rising rapidly, then that likely which push the market back into the ‘Recession Playbook,'” JPMorgan noted.
While a U.S. recession was not the bank’s base-case scenario, JPMorgan analysts warned that “the undetermined length of tariffs and the potential for the trade war to see an acceleration in new tariffs [means] we think stocks will be challenged as U.S. GDP growth estimates are cut.”
“Given the lack of a potential end to this escalation, the expectation is that tariffs of these magnitude with drive both Canada and Mexico into a recession. Look for U.S. GDP growth expectations to crater and for earnings revisions to be materially lower, forcing a re-think of year-end forecasts. With this in mind, we are changing our view to Tactically Bearish,” they noted. More