The uncertainty is doing plenty of economic damage. He may make things much worse.
Little more than a month has passed since Donald Trump announced his plans to upend the global economic order by imposing huge tariffs on almost every country in the world. The stock market sold off sharply following the announcement; within days, the S&P 500 had lost about 12 percent of its value. But if you look at the U.S. economy right now, it doesn’t look obviously different from the way it did just before Trump’s so-called Liberation Day. Job growth in April was respectable. Forecasts for April’s inflation number, which is due next week, suggest price increases have remained muted. Corporate-earnings reports have come in strong. And the stock market itself has regained the ground it lost in the weeks after April 2.
