ANALYSIS — Almost four months into his second term, President Donald Trump has moved away from his populist campaign rhetoric to a much bolder and disruptive economic policy approach built on tariffs — even being open to a potential recession — and urging Americans to consume less.
On the campaign trail, his sales pitch focused, in large part, on extending Republicans’ 2017 tax cuts and slapping tariffs on what his team had dubbed the world’s worst actors on trade and access to economic markets. One of Trump’s 2024 campaign slogans was to “make America wealthy again” — he even devoted an entire night at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee to that theme. And in rallies and interviews, he repeatedly hammered his Democratic opponents — first Joe Biden, then Kamala Harris — over inflation and higher consumer prices.
But back in the White House, Trump has slowly pivoted from his initial acknowledgement that his global import fees would cause some short-term “pain” to sounding open to the notion that the U.S. economy could slide into a recession, drawing condemnation from congressional Democrats.
