Front-running tariffs likely will stave off recession for Q1. But makes it more likely in Q2?

I'd been looking to see if consumer spending was holding up through the beginnings of our stock market decline in March, and we got an indication with this morning's release of retail sales numbers.

Retail sales climbed 1.4% in March from the prior month, the Commerce Department said Wednesday, up from February’s 0.2% gain and the highest monthly gain since January 2023. The figures are adjusted for seasonal swings but not inflation.

The strong showing in March was largely driven by sales of cars and auto parts. Excluding those purchases, retail sales were up a more modest 0.5%.

The big driver of the increase was due to a jump in the automobile sector, as it seems that American consumers took the advice of a recent Madison-area car dealer ad that I saw, and tried to “beat the tariffs”. Sales of autos and auto parts were up 5.3% in March after a 1.6% drop in February and a 3.4% drop in January.

So the increase merely gets us back to the (seasonally-adjusted) heights in auto and parts sales that we had at the end of 2024, and it's at a higher level of activity compared to the slumping times of 2023.

I will add that even if you take out autos and the volatile amount of spending on gasoline, March was a solid month for retail sales after a slow start to 2025. So-called “core” retail sales went up by 0.8% in March, and lifted the quarterly average for Q1 2025 to +0.6% compared to Q4 2024. That’s beating the rate of inflation in most areas for the first 3 months of 2025, so we seem likely to see consumer spending be positive for Q1 GDP.

But that doesn’t mean we aren't seeing distortions due to the antics of Tariff Man and his enablers in DC. While it’s good to see vehicles get cleared off of lots in March, there were large numbers of auto components ordered and imported in the last 2 months to beat the extra duties, and if the tariff threat encouraged people to buy sooner than later, there might not be the demand to follow up for the vehicles that are coming out of the factory now.

Likewise, the S&P has fallen another 5% since the end of March after dropping 8% in the 6 weeks leading up to March 31. At some point, you have to think that and the collapse in consumer sentiment is going to lead to cutbacks in consumer spending. And while we’ve seen announcements of layoffs, we have yet to see that show up with higher unemployment claims or drops in income in other reports.

With that in mind, I’m going to guess we eke out a slight gain in GDP for Q1, or at least growth once you remove the massive amount of imports in January and February which came in to beat the tariffs (imports subtract from GDP, remember). The underlying economy seems to have held up in these first three months, even if people don’t like what’s going on.

But there isn’t much positive to carry over into April, and it’s pretty clear that we are more likely to see things get worse than get better. And as we know in non-COVID recessions, once things turn downward, it takes a while to pull out of the downturn, because the job losses and lack of need to invest in businesses start to build on each other.

In addition, I wouldn’t expect much help from the federal government, especially as long as the DOGE dweebs are stealing data and the Trump trash are pulling funds from anything that might be good for society. And then trade seems to be drying up, especially as China cuts off American exports of food and energy in large numbers.

So yes, the US economy survived through March, but it’s not a good outlook for Q2, is it?

Sunday reading on the Fools of April in the White House

Wanted to forward a couple of columns to you. The first is from economist Paul Krugman, who says that President Trump's erratic, seemingly random decisions on tariffs have made the large investors lose trust US assets at this point. And that it is indisputable that higher prices are coming due to the President's decisions.

Paul Krugman - The Third-Worlding of America How to destroy 80 years of credibility in less than 3 months

[image or embed]

— Democracy Action Network (@democracyactionnet.bsky.social) April 11, 2025 at 7:19 AM

In fact, savvy traders have realized that there’s no coherent economic strategy. There’s an old line about military analysis: “Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals talk about logistics.” Well, when it comes to taking the pulse of financial markets, amateurs talk about stocks, but professionals talk about bond and currency markets. That’s because bond and currency markets are generally less driven by emotion. There’s no “meme gambling investing” in bond and currency markets. And these markets are both signaling major loss of faith in America.

First, about tariffs: It’s true that for the time being Trump has scaled back some of the tariffs displayed on his big piece of cardboard last week. For example, unless we have another policy swerve, the European Union will now face a 10 percent tariff over the next three months rather than a 20 percent tariff. But the tariff on China, our third-biggest trading partner after Canada and Mexico, has gone from 34 percent to more than 130 percent. And we still have high tariffs on steel, aluminum and so on. In effect, observers who claim that tariffs have gone down are missing the biggest part of the story.

Economists who have actually run the numbers, like those at the Yale Budget Lab, estimate that the April 9 tariff regime will raise consumer prices more than the April 2 regime because of the extraordinarily high tariff rate on Chinese imports. Specifically, the budget lab estimates that the latest version of Trump’s trade war will raise consumer prices by 2.9 percent. This is roughly ten times the probable impact of the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930.

Krugman goes on to note that this loss of confidence is the real problem, and is making the pros to treat America as a Banana Republic.

For example, economic theory and history both say that the imposition of tariffs normally leads to a stronger currency unless other countries retaliate. During his confirmation hearing Scott Bessent, the incoming Treasury secretary, argued that a 10 percent tariff would lead to something like a 4 percent rise in the dollar. But not this time. Instead of going up, the dollar has plunged....

The common thread in currency and bond markets is that, thanks to Trump, dollar assets — traditionally the foundation of the global financial system — are no longer perceived as safe.

The combination of interest rates soaring amid a slump and the currency plunging despite rising interest rates isn’t what we normally expect for advanced countries, let alone the owner of the world’s leading reserve currency. It is, however, what we often see in emerging-market economies. That is, investors have started treating the United States like a third-world economy.

That's the nice way of saying "TRUMP IS A F'ING MORON." Drew Magary of Defector put up a screed that reiterates that point, and sums up what I think a lot of us want to say to Trump and the group of kiss-up grifters that surrounds him.

Oh, shut the fuck up: defector.com/oh-shut-the-...

[image or embed]

— Defector (@defector.bsky.social) April 12, 2025 at 1:53 PM

The whole thing is great, and here's how it ends.

None of you people were built for this. You’re all unqualified, overwhelmed, and dumber than a post. And you think that standing behind a mic and going Hurrr durrr every other country has a smaller dick than us because of these policies will make you Patton. Well, President Kidney Failure, telling everyone you’re the greatest leader who ever led doesn’t make it so. Quite the contrary. People voted for you because they were bored. Now you’re gonna bleed them dry, all while small-talking them to death. Don’t you ever get tired of talking? Don’t you run out of saliva? Is there a strategic gland reserve that you and your cronies are skimming from to keep your maws properly lubricated? You pieces of shit are wasting words, and that offends me as a professional wordsmith. I choose my words carefully before writing them down, because that’s what people are supposed to do. They are not meant to be sentient word clouds, crying "FREEDOM!" the second a process server knocks on their door.

But that’s what you morons do, because spouting off is the only thing you know how to do. You’re destroying the English language, a feat that not even Ryan Murphy himself could manage despite his tireless efforts. So, before you’ve successfully rendered both America and basic human communication extinct, allow me to talk for just one moment. I only need eight words, and here they are:

Everyone, everywhere, would be better off without you.

This is what you get when you have a President who tells his aides to "treat each day as a TV episode", with no connection between past events and current developments. And where the "results" have little to do with economic outcomes, and more to do with what gets headlines and keeps the rubes stirred up so they don't ask questions.

But why is it the writers that have to tell this truth? Where are the Dems nationwide saying the simple fact that "THESE IDIOTS DON'T HAVE A CLUE". You really don't need to go further than that, because a strong majority of Americans already agree.

Americans aren't buying into the Trump economy. And that's before things actually get bad!

We knew that this was a key week of data that would tell us if Tariff Man's policies were having an impact on prices and jobs, with the release of the Consumer Price Index and the Producer Price Index reports for March. First came the CPI on Thursday.

It may be regarded by policymakers as a report from a different world given what has happened to tariff policy recently But the March CPI report was exceptionally cool. Headline CPI fell -0.05%, and core CPI rose just 0.06% This lowered the 12-month rate for both measures to a 4-year low

[image or embed]

— Nick Timiraos (@nicktimiraos.bsky.social) April 10, 2025 at 7:36 AM

Wow. Prices actually fell in March?

Kind of, as if you dig into the actual CPI report, you'll see that actual prices rose by 0.2% last month, but since it's expected that prices jump in March especially for gasoline as well as some other products, that translated into the seasonally-adjusted decline for the CPI report. And gasoline was a big reason why, as it fell 0.9% at the pump and by 6.3% on a seasonally adjusted basis.

The one item of concern was that food at home. This is also known as groceries, or as our Dear Leader calls it "a bag with different things in it", and unlike when he claimed last week, food at home went up by 0.5% in March, with eggs jumping by another 5.9% after increases of 15.2% and 10.4% in Trump's first 2 months in office. That pushed the 12-month price increase for groceries to 2.4%, which is the highest it's been since September 2023, and the 4.7% year-over-year increase in meats is the highest in 2 1/2 years.

But still, the overall CPI picture was good, and showed no sign of tariffs raising prices. What about wholesalers and other businesses? That followed with the Producer Price Index report on Friday, and it turned out that those prices dropped as well, down by 0.4% for final demand after rising 1.1% in January and 0.4% in February.

Not only was the drop in oil and gasoline prices a contributor to the drop in the PPI as well as the CPI, but food prices also went down for businesses in March, dropping by 2.1% after rising by a total of more than 5% in the 4 months prior to that.

So that should stabilize domestic food prices, although it's still up in the air as to what happens with higher taxes on imported foods and the profit-taking that domestic food businesses may take as a result of that.

But that good inflation news for March was overshadowed by what consumers thought of the turmoil Trump and the DOGE dweebs were causing, and what was going to happen from April going forward.

The University of Michigan's closely watched consumer sentiment index, released Friday, fell 11% to 50.8, the lowest since the depths of the pandemic.

[image or embed]

— CBS Detroit (@cbsdetroit.bsky.social) April 11, 2025 at 2:30 PM

Univ of Michigan 1-year Inflation expectations soared in April to 6.7% vs. 5.2% est. & 5.0% prior .. .. highest since 1981 (via Liz Ann Sonders)

[image or embed]

— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) April 11, 2025 at 9:09 AM

From the University of Michigan survey: Consumer expectations of future economic conditions among Republicans have dropped notably (though are above year-earlier levels). Independents are back to the low point of the Biden presidency.

[image or embed]

— Nick Timiraos (@nicktimiraos.bsky.social) April 11, 2025 at 9:33 AM

I'll remind you that "the low point of the Biden Presidency" was when year-over-year inflation was running at 9.1% and economic "experts" were saying a US recession was certain to happen in the next year (a recession that never came, by the way).

The consumer sentiment numbers underscore the real problem with the US economy, even before we officially have fallen into recession. No one with a drop of honesty is buying what TrumpWorld is trying to sell, and the White House and GOP Congress is filled with so many underqualified lackeys that won't do anything to correct the Senile King in Chief that is randomly throwing tariffs and regressive tax policies around without a hint of strategy or a clue (or a care) about how it affects everyday people.

"The U.S. is in the middle of two economic crises. One is being caused directly by tariffs. The other is a crisis of confidence being driven by a crisis of competence."

[image or embed]

— Justin Wolfers (@justinwolfers.bsky.social) April 10, 2025 at 5:02 PM

We'll find out next week if the tanking in consumer confidence translates and expectation of higher prices tanks the retail sales numbers for March, and guarantees a bad number for Q1 consumption. If people are clamping down because of Trumpian stupidity, then it becomes a double-whammy once the higher prices from tariffs inevitably hit in the coming months. And then the recession will likely be on for real.

Tariff turnaround - it's all so stupid. And today's move doesn't make us "all good"

Today, I was doing work while keeping an eye on the financial markets, and it seemed like a relatively even day, which in itself is better than the wreckage that the first full week of April had been. Around 20 minutes after my last check-in in the early afternoon, I took a look, and instead of the DOW being up 200, it was up more than 2,000.

Well something had to have happened. What was it?

At 1:18 p.m. ET, Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social there would be a 90-day pause on his steep "reciprocal" tariffs for non-retaliating countries.

"I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%, also effective immediately," part of Trump's post read.

And apparently that was all that was needed to have coked-up traders cover their shorts buy back into the markets? There are still tariffs in place for much of the world and those will still raise prices over what we're paying today, and Trump also boosted tariffs to 125% on China, and China is slapping 84% tariffs on anything we send to them (sorry, Wisconsin ginseng farmers).

But hey, if you bought in today, you made out like a bandit!

It was the S&P 500's best day since 2008, while Nasdaq enjoyed its second-largest one-day rally on record, topped only by a 14% gain back in 2001. For the Dow, Wednesday's rally marked its largest since 2008.

"Over the last few days it looked pretty glum, so I guess they say it was the biggest day in financial history," President Trump said on Wednesday from the White House lawn. "That's a pretty big change."

Ummm Donnie, 2001 and 2008 were good times for the financial markets or the economy. Just wanted to remind you of that.

And just because Trump panicked and backed off on some of his random and reckless policies of the last week, we are still nowhere near where we were when he started this BS 2 months ago....or even 1 week ago.

I threw $5,000 into the fire. But then I reached in and pulled out $3,000, severely burning my hand and convincing all the people around me that I'm insane. ART OF THE DEAL!

[image or embed]

— Rex Huppke (@rexhuppke.bsky.social) April 9, 2025 at 6:09 PM

It's all so stupid, because the people in charge are stupid and think they are so elite to be sheltered from consequence that they don't need to care. Well, until they saw Trump's approval ratings going down like the stock market.

But what are the dead-end manosphere types going to think about Trump caving, since they believe he's such a "manly decider".

My question now: If tariffs were the key to restoring the manhood of Americans, what does this 90-day "pause" mean? Do all the men who just had their masculinity restored have to return their testicles to a lockbox for 3 months? I have questions. www.salon.com/2025/04/09/f...

[image or embed]

— Amanda Marcotte (@amandamarcotte.bsky.social) April 9, 2025 at 7:16 PM

As Marcotte notes, are we going have this entire charade happen again 90 days from now, and be hanging over us during the 4th of July? Or sooner? Today's reversal isn't going to give any honest business person enough confidence to decide to invest and build factories, because there's no way anyone can know what the terms of trade and business will be in 6 months or 6 weeks or 6 days. And I think that includes Trump himself.

So despite the modifying of some of the worst and most random tariffs on partners that we had even terms of trade with, we're still in a worse economic spot than we were at the start of April, with prices going up more than they were already set to rise. And in TrumpWorld, there's absolutely no plan beyond taxes on imports, which means they won't be able to provide the conditions bring back and support manufacturing jobs in the coming months, or for the coming years.

Breakdown of a Supreme electoral margin in Wisconsin

It was quite the electoral blowout in this purple state when it came down to deciding the balance of power in Wisconsin's Supreme Court. Dem-supported Susan Crawford romped to a 10-point victory, beating the WisGOP/Elon Musk-backed Brad Schimel 55%-45%.

And the outcomes bore strong resemblance to the other double-digit blowouts for the Dem-backed candidates in these April Court elections in the 2020s. You get the first indication on that when looking at the results by county in the state.

See the blue in the Fox Valley and in the southeast corner in the state? That shows Crawford winning the "BOW counties" of Brown, Outagamie and Winnebago in northeast Wisconsin and Racine and Kenosha in southeast Wisconsin. All of those counties voted for Republicans Ron Johnson in the 2022 November elections, and Donald Trump in the 2024 Presidential election, when both of them won statewide by at or just below 1%.

With Crawford breaking 50% of the combined vote in each of those 2 regions, along with getting over 47% of the vote outside of the largest metro areas, you could just look at those outcomes alone, and guess that you were going to get results that looked like the last 2 Court races.

Then things got worse for Schimel in the largest 2 metro areas of Wisconsin. Nearly 82% of Dane County's votes went to Crawford, and she got an even higher percentage in the City of Milwaukee, nearing 84% - more than 6.5% above what Kamala Harris pulled last November. Schimel also got blown out nearly 2 to 1 in the suburbs of Milwaukee County, with Dane County's Crawford putting up margins that even exceeded what Milwaukee County's Janet Protasiewicz drew in 2023.

And the consistent Dem improvement in the Milwaukee County suburbs has been mirrored with Dem improvement in the WOW Counties that border Milwaukee (Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington). In 2019's Supreme Court election, Lisa Neubauer lost the WOW Counties by more than 2 to 1. But in both the 2023 and 2025 victories, the Dem-supported Justice candidate got 41% and 41.5% of the vote, respectively.

The other big story in this Supreme Court election was the strong turnout, which was likely spurred by all the local and national attention on the race along with the obscene amount of ad spending. There was over 2.36 million votes cast, totals that are closer to midterm November turnouts than April Supreme Court elections.

Where those votes came from also largely resembled a midterm, with Dane County and (especially) the WOW Counties having less of a share than in previous April elections, and the City of Milwaukee taking a larger share due to stronger turnout than they'd had for past Supreme Court elections.

The combination of larger turnout and larger Dem margins in the already strongly-blue Dane County and the City of Milwaukee means that the vote margins for Crawford grew larger in those places for Tuesday's election. Those margins have been steadily growing for Dem-backed candidates in every Supreme Court election since 2019.

It's near-impossible for Republicans to win anything statewide when they begin with a deficit out of those 2 areas that totals 12% of the state's electorate, as it did last week and in 2023.

One of the ways that Republicans held down those margins in the 2024 presidential election in Dane County and the City of Milwaukee as well as other blue-voting areas was to get more votes from younger men, especially in college areas. But that "bro strategy" didn't work at all for Schimel in this election, especially in the wards in Madison near the UW campus, where Crawford kept 5/6 of Harris's vote totals, but Schimel lost more 2/3 of Trump's votes in the same areas.

The "bro vote" also didn't seem to appear for the Schimel/Musk team in other college counties in Wisconsin, including the ones that included UW campuses in La Crosse, Eau Claire, Stevens Point, and Oshkosh.

Dem margins, 2024 Presidential election vs 2025 Supreme Court election
La Crosse (+9.3% in 2024, +26% in 2025)
Eau Claire (+10.6% in 2024, +25.6% in 2025)
Portage (+1.2% in 2024, +15.4% in 2025)
Winnebago (-4.7% in 2024, +7.0% in 2025)

And with no Senate race on the docket for 2026 to misinform casual voters, those numbers should be a big flashing warning to Republicans that they likely can't repeat Trumpian strategies in non-Trump elections.

It's not a guarantee that this translates into a big Dem win in next April's Supreme Court election, (even if the odious Rebecca Bradley hasn't been beamed up to the federal bench and ends up being the GOP's candidate), and it doesn't mean a Dem sweep in November 2026. But the trends are definitely in the right direction for the blue team, especially if they can replicate the huge efforts they pulled off to help push Susan Crawford to victory last week.

Even a good jobs report is a bad thing for Trump and Wall Street

With all of the turmoil of the last month overall and the tanking of the stock market on Thursday, lots of people were looking to see if Friday's US jobs report for March was going to show a significant slowdown (if not outright decline) in job growth.

WASHINGTON (AP) - US added a surprising 228,000 jobs last month, as the American economy shows resilience amid Trump's trade wars.

— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) April 4, 2025 at 7:33 AM

Wait, really? Apparently so, if you buy the report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 228,000 in March, higher than the average monthly gain of 158,000 over the prior 12 months. In March, job gains occurred in health care, in social assistance, and in transportation and warehousing. Employment also increased in retail trade, partially reflecting the return of workers from a strike. Federal government employment declined.

Health care added 54,000 jobs in March, in line with the average monthly gain of 52,000 over the prior 12 months. Over the month, employment continued to trend up in ambulatory health care services (+20,000), hospitals (+17,000), and nursing and residential care facilities (+17,000).

If our economy keeps adding jobs in health care, maybe we shouldn't be cutting back access to health care or stopping research on diseases, eh?

That said, the first two months of the year had their job numbers revised down.

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for January was revised down by 14,000, from +125,000 to +111,000, and the change for February was revised down by 34,000, from +151,000 to +117,000. With these revisions, employment in January and February combined is 48,000 lower than previously reported.

Ok, that makes the March number make a bit more sense, as we're 180,000 above where we thought we were. But I did find it interesting that the BLS added this note in light of Elon Musk and other DOGE dweebs trying to impose large nunbers of layoffs in the federal government over the last couple of months.

Within government, federal government employment declined by 4,000 in March, following a loss of 11,000 jobs in February. (Employees on paid leave or receiving ongoing severance pay are counted as employed in the establishment survey.)

So if these former or furloughed employees are getting paid via buyouts or other severance packages, they still are part of the payroll, according to the BLS. It also makes me wonder if this is a big reason why unemployment claims have stayed so low despite all of the Trumpian economic vandalism going on.

Even the increase in unemployment to 4.2% was really a minor change from 4.13% to 4.15%, with solid increases in labor force (+232,000) and number of people working (+201,000). In addition, the U-6 unemployment rate, which includes discouraged workers not in the work force and Americans forced into part-time work, retreated from its 40-month high of 8.0% in February down to 7.9% for March.

However, after President Trump announced massive, across-the-board tariffs on Wednesday and the DOW Jones falling by 1,680 points, a good jobs report is NOT what the stock market wanted to hear. And so the bleeding kept happening on Wall Street for Friday.

LATEST | Trump’s tariffs rollout sees stock market suffer worst week since 2020 as Dow drops 2,200 points by close

[image or embed]

— The Independent (@the-independent.com) April 4, 2025 at 3:23 PM

The reason I say that the good jobs report was bad news for Wall Street is that it showed there was no reason to lower interest rates at this time, no matter what debt-laden oligarchs like Trump and Musk want. We have costs and prices slated to rise with tariffs, and that report gives no indication of widespread job loss in America, despite what the headlines say about TrumpWorld’s efforts to wreck the operations of the federal government. Which is why I think the report is real and hasn't been messed with by the White House.

With the data coming in combined with recent events, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell admitted that he was going to have to wait to take any action when asked about where things stand on the economy and related monetary policy.

President Donald Trump's new tariffs are "larger than expected," and the economic fallout including higher inflation and slower growth likely will be as well, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Friday, while cautioning it was still too soon to know what the right response from the central bank ought to be.

"We face a highly uncertain outlook with elevated risks of both higher unemployment and higher inflation," undermining both of the Fed's mandates of 2% inflation and maximum employment, Powell told a business journalists' conference in Arlington, Virginia, in remarks that pointed to difficult decisions ahead for the U.S. central bank and did nothing to staunch a global bloodletting in stock markets….

Powell said the Fed has time to wait for more data to decide how monetary policy should respond, but the central bank's focus will be on ensuring that inflation expectations remain anchored, particularly if Trump's import taxes touch off a more persistent jump in price pressures.

"While tariffs are highly likely to generate at least a temporary rise in inflation, it is also possible that the effects could be more persistent," Powell said.

In other words “HEY DONNIE, I CAN’T LOWER RATES WHEN YOU’RE DOING STUPID SHIT LIKE THIS!” You think Tariff Man will get the hint this weekend while he’s entertaining the Saudis at the LIV Golf tournament at Doral?

The good jobs report also indicates to me that the fall in the coming months is going to be even harder. We've seen how manufacturers boosted imports and orders in the first 2 months of 2025 to try to get ahead of the tariffs, and with the drop in the stock market and Trump/Musk Admin layoffs hitting Americans' pocketbooks, we are likely to see significant cutbacks sooner than later.

Trump tariffs tank the market today, and manufacturing set to tank in near future

So what's going on in the US financial news today?

Seems like it'll be quite an adjustment for people. For no good reason beyond...they can?

While there was a minor decline in the trade deficit in February compared to January, it's still a massive jump compared to where we were at the start of 2024.

February exports were $278.5 billion, $8.0 billion more than January exports. February imports were $401.1 billion, less than $0.1 billion less than January imports.

The February decrease in the goods and services deficit reflected a decrease in the goods deficit of $8.8 billion to $147.0 billion and a decrease in the services surplus of $0.8 billion to $24.3 billion.

Year-to-date, the goods and services deficit increased $117.1 billion, or 86.0 percent, from the same period in 2024. Exports increased $24.0 billion or 4.6 percent. Imports increased $141.2 billion or 21.4 percent.

This is a clear example of businesses trying to get imports into the country before any Trump tariffs would raise the costs of those products. And in addition to that big jump in imports, new orders and shipments for manufacturing went up in February.

New orders for manufactured durable goods in February, up two consecutive months, increased $2.8 billion or 1.0 percent to $289.4 billion, up from the previously published 0.9 percent increase. This followed a 3.4 percent January increase. Transportation equipment, also up two consecutive months, led the increase, $1.5 billion or 1.5 percent to $98.4 billion. New orders for manufactured nondurable goods increased $0.8 billion or 0.3 percent to $304.5 billion.

Shipments of manufactured durable goods in February, up three consecutive months, increased $3.4 billion or 1.2 percent to $292.3 billion, unchanged from the previously published increase. This followed a 0.7 percent January increase. Transportation equipment, also up three consecutive months, led the increase, $2.0 billion or 2.1 percent to $96.7 billion. Shipments of manufactured nondurable goods, up five consecutive months, increased $0.8 billion or 0.3 percent to $304.5 billion. This followed a 0.3 percent January increase. Chemical products, up twelve of the last thirteen months, led the increase, $0.6 billion or 0.8 percent to $83.7 billion.

Let’s remember that these new orders and imports happened before the main tariffs hit, so they shouldn’t cost as much for consumers vs orders and imports that happen after the tariffs hit. But I bet that won’t stop those businesses from raising prices in the coming weeks and blaming the tariffs, while pocketing large profits on the excuse.

If we had an administration that really wanted to improve things for American workers and consumers with these tariffs, they’d include this announcement with an added emphasis on going after price-gouging companies in the coming months. But does anyone believe an administration that is defunding the CFPB and the SEC to allow companies to avoid consequences for defrauding consumers and investors is going to do anything legit to stop price-gouging? Me neither.

All of this would indicate a growth scenario in manufacturing, and we did see a rush to buy cars last month, even as consumer sentiment collapsed. But given that the economy is (to be kind) in an uncertain place, I’d be surprised if a lot of people want to run out and buy vehicles and other goods in big numbers in the near future, especially if they've already pulled some purchases forward.

That means there won't be buyers for the added orders in manufacturing, so there won't be any need to keep this level of production going. Businesses can try to pass on the higher costs from tariffs to consumers, but I doubt consumers will go along with it if they have any choice. So you’ve got a collision of several factors that lead to further declines in manufacturing in the coming months.

Now combine those cutbacks in manufacturing and consumer spending, and do you see a scenario to keep the economy growing in 2-3 months? I sure don't, and then compound it with major job losses imposed by the Trump/Musk Administration, the latest coming from the US Department of Health and Human Services.

But hey, this will bring back manufacturing jobs to the US, so it's worth it, right? Isn't that the headline on factory jobs that I saw today?

Just hours after the latest tariffs went into effect, Stellantis has announced it would idle plants and begin layoffs.

President Donald Trump’s 25% tariff on imported vehicles was put into action at midnight, Thursday, April 3. The White House has also said it plans to place tariffs on key auto parts and components.

In a letter sent out Thursday morning, Stellantis’ North American COO Antonio Filosa said that despite seeing market growth since January, the company would idle its Windsor Assembly Plant for two weeks and its Toluca Assembly Plant for April and temporarily lay off 900 workers.

"With the new automotive sector tariffs now in effect, it will take our collective resilience and discipline to push through this challenging time,“ Filosa wrote. ”But we will quickly adapt to these policy changes and will protect our company, maintain our competitive edge and continue delivering great products to our customers."

I don't think this is the “winning” that low-info voters imagined they were going to get with a Businessman in the White House. But it sure looks like the type of careless idiocy that a lot of us tried to remind these low-info dipshits about, and instead those folks decided to follow what the algo told them was "expertise" instead, and now we are all going to be paying the price.