We presciently warned for a year and earlier this week in Fortune that Trump’s economic policies and this week’s “Liberation Day” tariffs announcement would prove to be a cataclysmic event. Like frat boys in denial that the driver of their car is dangerously drunk, Trump acolytes such as Peter Navarro, who ludicrously implored “trust in Trump,” and Howard Lutnick, who flippantly argued, “let Trump run the global economy,” are cheering as Trump, intoxicated with his power, is inches away from blindly driving the U.S. economy off the cliff with other silent enabling lieutenants paralyzed by fear.
Many economists have focused on the hyperinflationary nature of Trump’s tariffs, the tariff-driven 15% plunge in the stock market wiping out ~$5 trillion in wealth, the damage to consumer confidence, the laughably dubious way the ‘reciprocal’ tariffs formula was calculated, and the specter of retaliatory tariffs. That was enough to fully fund the Ukraine war for a century and fund the NIH for a century. But there is an even greater concern we’ve been hearing over and over from CEOs that is hugely underappreciated—which is that businesses are becoming entirely paralyzed from authorizing new investments.
