By Mark Anderson, Legal and Legislative Assistant, NMBA Following the 2025 presidential election, it became clear that a major factor in Donald Trump’s victory was deep economic dissatisfaction among the American electorate. The overriding themes of Joe Biden’s domestic economic agenda were pervasive inflation, soaring interest rates, housing and healthcare becoming increasingly unaffordable, and wealth inequality continuing to skyrocket. More surface-level indicators like the S&P 500, Dow Jones, GDP and unemployment remained strong under Biden, but the foundational issues that plague the American economy only continued to worsen. In viewing the aftermath of the November election, issue polling indicated that the economy was one of Trump’s strongest issues, with a majority of the electorate indicating that they trusted him to lower prices and generally govern in a fashion similar to his first term in office. However, early in his second administration, Trump has governed in a wildly different fashion from his first term, essentially taking a sledgehammer to key components of the American economy. A lot of people who thought they were voting for economic stability have instead seen economic chaos, destruction and multitudes of what seem to be inexplicable, head-scratching decisions. As a result, Trump is underwater in polling on the issue of the economy, even though his overall approval has remained fairly steady. This is a much different story than his first term, where the economy was consistently Trump’s strongest issue. However, it’s important that the public not chalk up many of the economic decisions early in the second Trump administration as chaos, incompetence or poor judgment but something far more intentional and, if taken to its logical conclusion, possibly sinister. For instance, one of the president’s signature policies is blanket tariffs against Canada, Mexico and China, along with wide-reaching tariffs on other key trading partners. Blanket tariffs can only be described as domestic economic sanctions, essentially shooting yourself in the foot. The entire purpose of tariffs is to spur domestic production and consumption in certain sectors by placing higher prices on foreign goods, but without any specificity or long-term, wide-scale plan to implement domestic manufacturing, the tariffs simply act as an additional tax on Americans. When the American government places economic sanctions on another country, the intent is to weaken and, eventually, destroy the economy of said country, so it’s obvious that domestic economic sanctions like tariffs would have the same effect, whatever the intent is. A recent article from CBS News outlined a frightening burgeoning economic picture as a result of the policies Trump is undertaking. “A new survey from Bank of America shows that global fund managers are moving out of domestic companies in what analysts at the financial giant describe as the ‘biggest drop in U.S. equity allocation ever.’ The reason: growing pessimism about the country’s economic outlook as the Trump administration beats the drum for a trade war with Canada, Mexico, China and other countries,” the article details. “A major shadow over financial markets is the prospect of steep new U.S. tariffs on key trading partners scheduled to take effect on April 2. Those include 25% duties on U.S. imports from Mexico and Canada, as well as even more sweeping matching levies on a number of other countries.” ECONOMIC CHAOS OR SOMETHING MORE SINISTER? 13
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTg3NDExNQ==