Presidents usually do all they can to avoid recessions, so much so that they avoid even saying the word. But President Trump and his advisers in recent weeks have offered a very different message. Yes, a recession is possible, they have said. Maybe one wouldn’t even be that bad. Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, has … Read more
The growing trade war and rapid policy shifts are expected to drag down economic growth in the United States and around the world, according to projections released on Monday. The resilience that was evident last year is slipping, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in its latest interim economic report, which estimated that … Read more
Just days after President Trump won the 2024 election, Jerome H. Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, sidestepped a question about how the central bank would grapple with a toxic combination of high inflation, stagnating growth and rising unemployment. “The whole plan is not to have stagflation,” Mr. Powell told reporters. “Knock on wood, we’ve … Read more
President Trump has promised to create an age of American exceptionalism with policies that put the United States first, and ahead of other nations. But Mr. Trump’s moves in the early days of his administration have had the opposite outcome for the American stock market. The S&P 500, which for years had been soaring above … Read more
Tariff threats. Growing uncertainty about the economy. And a push for much lower oil prices. For all of their bravado about U.S. energy dominance and enthusiasm for deregulation, American energy executives are beginning to worry about President Trump’s agenda. Their concerns crept into conversations in hotel meeting rooms and over private meals this week in … Read more
Stocks on Wall Street rallied on Friday to their biggest daily jump since President Trump’s election, bouncing off a drop that had left the market in a correction after weeks of selling. But the gains weren’t enough to overcome the steep losses from earlier in the week, and the S&P 500 remained in negative territory … Read more
Policy uncertainty and tariff whiplash are making consumers less confident about the economic outlook and more worried about inflation, new data from the University of Michigan showed on Friday, the latest evidence that Americans are bracing for pain in President Trump’s second term. A new survey released on Friday showed consumer sentiment plummeting 11 percent … Read more
The price of gold set a record high on Friday, breaking above $3,000 per troy ounce for the first time as investors reckon with President Trump’s seesawing tariff policy, fears of an economic slowdown and a sinking stock market. Gold is often sought out by investors as a safe haven during times of turmoil, and … Read more
Investors watching the S&P 500’s plunge this week are processing a mix of signals. Will the threat of tariffs push the economy into a recession or is this simply a retrenchment from the highly valued technology companies that some analysts and investors argued were due for a pullback? There is a different stock index that … Read more
The world’s most widely followed stock-market benchmark slid into a correction on Thursday, a drop that underscores how the two-year-long bull market is running out of steam in the early days of the Trump administration. The move stems from investors’ growing pessimism about the whipsawing policy pronouncements from Washington over the past few weeks. On-again, … Read more