US Economy Shrinks in Q1 of 2025, Trump Recession on the way

[Johnny2X2X]

-0.3 %.

https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gross-domestic-product

[Doodley]

1. Good! The sooner Trump and the MAGA base self-implode the better.

[Johnny2X2X]

4. It's a weird dynamic for me

I care about the economy in terms of regular people, and a shrinking economy hurts regular people because we're about to see unemployment rise and wages start to fall. Trump's and the GOP's ideas are to basically end the middle class once and for all and replace them with the working poor entirely. So if some pain now can put a stop to that plan, it's worth it.

People always follow the dips and spikes in the DOW, but that is only meaningful in terms of people losing jobs because businesses are pulling back investment. Yeah, people have 401Ks, but 401Ks are largley blended to reduce risk and a lot of people don't get that. A 20% fall in stocks rarely means even a 15% fall in anyone's 401K. And the closer you are to retirement, the less a stock market selloff effects your 401K.

[Squaredeal]

9. There will be pressure on employers to raise wages and salaries.

…do to inflation and they want to retain them so they don’t jump ship at their first opportunities. Unions will also pressure their employers to increase wages. Just laying off unnecessary workers doesn’t mean that the rest will accept pay cuts.

[Johnny2X2X]

12. UE rises a few points and there will be plenty of workers will to take jobs for less pay

Inflation or no inflation, high unemployment means less upward pressure on wages.

[Doodley]

10. I've lost so much (mostly pre-Trump bad investments) that we are having to downsize. To get rid of the fascist, I would

be prepared to lose it all.

[Prairie Gates]

2. Good Lord!

Batten down the hatches.

[BoRaGard]

3. G.O.P. is fully responsible

no matter that they will try to blame Hilary's emails, or some other wanky crock of crap

[newdeal2]

7. Oh you know he is getting ready to blame Biden

But we all know what changed in January…

[newdeal2]

15. Yup he just blamed Biden

Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden “Overhang.” This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!

Oh something certainly is going boom

[LonePirate]

5. He has conditioned his voters to believe short term pain is necessary for long term gains. They welcome a recession.

It validates his efforts in their eyes because they think the pain will be temporary and the eventual gains will be massive. A recession will not shake their faith in him.

[Johnny2X2X]

8. What's crazy is the whole thing makes zero sense

He's not bringing manufacturing back, and even if he did, who is going to do those jobs? We are still near full employment, low paying manufacturing jobs aren't going to attract applicants. People have this fantasy that local tool and die shops, and steel mills are going to open their doors back up and the local yokels will graduate high school and walk down to the factory into a $85,000 a year job with great health care and a pension. That's never happeneing, even if the US stopped importing everything, that's not going to happen. Any manufacturing that comes back because of these tariffs will be close to minimum wage because these products are cheap and people aren't going to pay triple the price for regular goods they buy on Amazon.

And all of this is ignoring the fact that Trump lost manufacturing jobs in his first term, while it was Joe Biden who gained manufacturing jobs. And Biden didn't do it with tariffs, he did it by promoting technology that would bring higher paying jobs here, not the menial jobs we don't even want back. We need tech jobs to be created, not low skill ones. We need educated and highly skilled workers to fill the jobs we want to have in the US. If you knoestly could wave a magic wand and bring back 50 million low skill jobs, the next wand wave would have to lower the minimum wage to $1.00 an hour, because that's what it would take to keep these products cheap enough for Americans to still buy.

[Doodley]

11. Good points! In addition, why would manufacturers build factories in America during recession?

[travelingthrulife]

16. basically MAGAs just deny reality. My MAGA brother says the economy is great right now after the disasterous

economy under Biden. They live in fantasyland.

[gab13by13]

6. Not sure the market can disregard this one today.

but who knows?

The next quarter will be worse, unless they fudge the numbers.

DOW futures are dropping.

[edhopper]

13. A recession is unquestionable

we are heading to major shortages from imports in the West Coast ports from the tariffs. There is no way that doesn't further shrink the economy.

[Johnny2X2X]

14. Agree

We're likely in a recession already, this shrinkage is mostly from March IMO, the economy was doing great in January and into February.

And we could end all tariffs today and I think a recession is built in. This was a shock to businesses and consumers. Businesses don't know what to do and aren't investing, consumers aren't spending. A reession of choice, 100% a choice.