Trump faces new economic uncertainties amid trade battles
President Trump is facing slumping consumer confidence and deepening concern among business leaders ahead of the first jobs report of his new administration.
Many economic forecasts show the U.S. adding somewhere around 150,000 jobs with a slight increase in the unemployment rate last month — a solid, if unexciting report.
But tumbling markets in the wake of Trump's new tariffs, the mass firings of federal workers, plateauing inflation and slowing economic growth are heightening uncertainty and interest ahead of the report’s release by the Labor Department.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Thursday closed with a loss of 400 points, falling 1 percent on the day. The Nasdaq composite fell 2.6 percent on the day, sinking 10 percent past its most recent peak and entering correction territory. The S&P 500 index was down 1.8 percent.
“Today was the day the growth fear turned into a reality,” Callie Cox, chief market strategist at Ritholtz Wealth Management, said in a Thursday interview.
Cox said Thursday’s sell-off was largely driven by a discouraging spike in corporate layoffs reported by employment firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas.
U.S. companies cut more than 172,000 jobs in February, according to the Challenger report released Thursday, the most in any month since July 2020. It was also the highest number of February layoffs since 2009.
Cox said while the Challenger report isn’t an “end-all, be-all ... it sure sets us up in a precarious fashion for the main event tomorrow.”
“This week has been all about investors seeing these tariff-related and policy-related pressures, economic pressures in the data that's coming out. And that's worrying.”
Trump allowed his 25 percent tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports to take effect Tuesday, temporarily exempted some North American automakers from the import taxes Wednesday and delayed even more of the new levies Thursday.
As of Thursday afternoon, Trump has exempted all Canadian and Mexican products that comply with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement (USMCA), the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) enacted during his first term.
The exemption, however, lasts only until April 2, when Trump is set to impose reciprocal tariffs on countries that have imposed their own import taxes on U.S. goods.
“On April 2, we’re going to move into the reciprocal tariff, and hopefully Mexico and Canada will have done a good enough job on fentanyl that this part of the conversation will be off the table, and we’ll move just to the reciprocal tariff conversation,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in a statement.
Canada, Mexico and other countries being hit with Trump’s tariffs are responding with their own measures.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford in a Thursday interview with Fox Business Network’s “The Claman Countdown” said his province on Monday would impose “a 25 percent tariff on electricity coming from Ontario to Michigan, New York and Minnesota.” The tariff would affect 13 states in total.
The speed, scale and inconsistency of Trump’s tariffs have made it difficult for businesses to plan for the year ahead, experts say. The lack of clear ways for Canada and Mexico to free themselves of the tariffs have also added to confusion.
Trump and his top officials have tied his new tariffs to various goals: reviving U.S. manufacturing, making economic relationships fairer and forcing Canada and Mexico to crack down on drug trafficking and migration.
But the administration has not publicly identified the specific thresholds Canada and Mexico must reach to end the tariffs.
“If targets are not well defined, then progress is difficult to gauge, and the ending of tariffs is difficult to forecast,” analysts at S&P Global Ratings wrote in an analysis.
“Uncertainty around U.S. tariff policy — and U.S. policy more generally — has spiked to levels seen only during the pandemic and the global financial crisis. Should these uncertainties cause companies to hold back investments and households to hold back durable goods spending, the result would be lower demand and lower growth.”
Some Trump allies have acknowledged the mounting economic pressures on the job market and are bracing for a disappointing jobs report while turning the blame on the Biden administration.
Fox Business host Larry Kudlow, who served as Trump’s National Economic Council director during his first term, predicted Wednesday that the U.S. would have to “suffer” through a bad February jobs report, despite some estimates that the report will actually show gains for the month.
“Very smart people are telling me that the jobs number that's coming out, the February jobs number that's coming out Friday, could be flat, even negative,” Kudlow said while interviewing Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins during his eponymous show on Fox Business.
“My generic point here, with respect to affordability and the economy, is we’re going to have to suffer through some bad news. This has nothing to do with Trump. Trump’s programs not in yet! And I’ve got people on the left who are blaming Trump. How can you blame Trump when he wasn’t president when these seeds were planted?” Kudlow said.
The monthly jobs reports are generally seen as lagging economic indicators, and Cox acknowledged that the job market had already begun to weaken in 2024. High interest rates set to curb inflation were among various factors weighing on the economy.
“When you have a high interest rate environment, the economy is that much more vulnerable to unexpected events that happen and shake the ground underneath us. And that seems to be what's happened with this policy fog that's come in with the new administration,” Cox said.
“We may be in a different spot, if the economy hadn't been pushing through high interest rates for multiple years. And I think that's actually quite unfortunate,” she added.
“For a while we thought we had a soft landing, and now it turns out that we have a pretty major bump in the road that we have to get over”
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