It’s Not Just Tariffs: U.S. Growth Risks Are Piling Up

Workers unload steel from a freight ship in the dockyard at the Port of Detroit in Detroit, Michigan. Credit: Matthew Hatcher/Bloomberg.

President Donald Trump’s latest trade-war salvo, the largest act of American protectionism since the 1930s, will likely put the brakes on U.S. growth in the near term—and it’s just one of the shocks piling up for increasingly nervous consumers, businesses, and investors. There are also Elon Musk’s cuts to the federal workforce, the clampdown on immigration, and a potential drag on business investment amid much policy uncertainty. Add it all up, says the growing consensus among economists, and it spells a slowdown for the world’s biggest economy.

Few see much danger of outright contraction this year, and there are growth-friendly measures like tax cuts in the pipeline too. Still, the specter of a “Trumpcession” has been raised. An escalating tit-for-tat trade war would only amplify it—and Trump has made plain that many more tariffs will follow the ones he imposed on Mexico, Canada, and China last week (only to revoke the duties on some imports from Mexico and Canada later in the week).