The evidence of the agrio mood of the Americans is everywhere. Even in the place where it seeks evidence: Google.
An unprecedented number of Americans is now looking for Google the Word “tariff“A minimum interest issue for them during last year’s presidential elections.
There is an even more terrifying word that are now looking for Google. “recession“A line of search trend that often, but not always, coincides with an economic contraction.
The signals are in the American restlessness with the US commercial war of President Donald Trump and is emerging in several places: from economic data, grunt companies, media coverage and in tense exchanges in the White House.
On Tuesday, the Daily Information Session of the White House was dominated by questions about a commercial war that has helped Eliminate all stock market profits From the elections of November 5.
The chief economist of Moody’s is among those who see a growing probability of a recession of the United States: Mark Zandi puts it to 35 percent, and some even expressed it higher.
Everything depends, Zandi told CBC News, about whether Trump’s tariff policies remain in place; if they extend to other countries; And how retaliation looks.
“Everything is negative. It’s just a matter of how negative,” Zandi said about current commercial uncertainty. But if this continues, he said, “it would result in a complete, elimination and dragged commercial war that would result in a global recession.”
And that is the context of why Trump has achieved a apparently impossible feat: make the main care of US media about commerce.
It is not clear if the average Canadian fully includes the little interest that is generally in commercial news here, partly because the economy of the United States depends less on trade in general and less depends, specifically, in Canada as an export market.
But now everywhere in the news is rate, rate, rate.
The networks have correspondents in Canada that narrate cross -border anger. The CNN segments present to an unhappy beer manufacturer in North Carolina, worrying about aluminum rates that erode their thin profit margins; Others show that Apple exporters from the Washington state worried, and Jack Daniel is talking about being started from the shelves of Canadian stores.
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, responds to the Prime Minister of Ontario, Doug Ford, suspending his promise to add a 25 percent surcharge on electricity exports to some United States states after Ford and the Secretary of Commerce of the United States Howard Lutnick had a “productive conversation about the economic relationship between the United States and Canada.”
The last American celebrity? Doug Ford
Doug Ford is now omnipresent on American television.
The Ontario Prime Minister is atypically for a subnational foreign leader, transforming into a family name here, with his noise of Sabre and high voltage language that is also atypically blunt for a Canadian politician.
Of course, that attention carries downward risks. Its brief gravation of electricity exports caused a Trump contradilla of even more rates. The White House even warned about serious consequences for Canada if it cuts electricity.
While both marked it, the United States is still adding 25 percent of steel and aluminum tariffs on Wednesday, with incalculable consequences for numerous industries.
That uncertainty was extended through a meeting of international auto parts manufacturers, meeting at a conference in Washington.
“This causes panic and paralysis,” said Flavio Volpe, head of the main auto parts lobby group in Canada.
“It seems here [Trump] He doesn’t care. And he is trying to shake the markets. To what end? No one knows it. “
It is the issue of an animated debate among conservatives: if Trump is in the head and creates an avoidable disaster, or if he has a viable plan in some 3D chess movement.
Theories about the latter include the obvious: that Trump wants companies to abandon foreign production and build factories in the United States, which several important companies have already done.
But there is a less obvious theory that their supporters are selling, which actually wants to stop the economy, force lower interest rates, resulting in lower mouths and payments of the United States debt.
In an informative session of the White House, the press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the president of the United States, Donald Trump, has not yet spoken with the designated Prime Minister Mark Carney, before criticizing the Ontario electricity export surcharge, imposed by Prime Minister Doug Ford against US tariffs.
Trying to decipher the end of Trump’s game
Reflecting that division at the party, the New York Post, which leans to the right, offered a Little flattering Cover that shows a falling stock market, but a more flattering column In Trump’s approach.
Meanwhile, The Conservative National Review published an unequivocally scathing column Titled, “Does Trump know why he was chosen?”
He said: “President Trump runs the risk of blowing his second mandate before he has reached the two -month mark. Follow me. Shout me to say that. I don’t care.
“The people who voted to Donald Trump back to office wanted me to bring 2019. They did not register for a commercial war with Canada, the resurrection of [tariff-imposing former president] William McKinley, or an endless game of red light/green light than tanks [retirement plans]”
The White House is aggressively pushing back.
During an informative daily press session dominated by El Comercio on Tuesday, Trump spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, cited new manufacturing jobs, and reports of several companies that are reformulated, of the pharmaceutical giant Merck to Apple.
The official White House line: forgets the reaction on Wall Street, which is temporary. Look Main Street and the long -term effect on US works.
Led to an unusually personal exchange.
An Associated Press reporter referred to tariffs as a tax increase on Americans. Leavitt insisted that the foreigner paid abroad. Strictly speaking, the journalist was right, although foreign companies sometimes end up paying to avoid losing their US clients.
But the journalist challenged her, asking: “I’m sorry, have you ever paid a rate? Because I have done it.” Leavitt expressed his regret for letting the AP ask a question: “I think it is insulting that you are trying to prove my knowledge of the economy.”
This is what is difficult to dispute: economic data are agrious.
Commercial uncertainty is in historical maximums. Consumer confidence has abandonment. The S&P 500 has lost 10 percent of its previous one, which officially enters the correction territory. Other indicators say recession It is a growth possibility.
There are two problems, says the economist and commerce analyst Marcus Noland, vice president of the Peterson Pro-Trade Institute of International Economics.
One is the rates itself. He said economists can estimate the impact. In fact, the Peterson Institute has, calculating That Trump’s first batch of tariffs would shave a percentage point or two of the economies of Canada and Mexico, and a fraction of a point outside the economy of the United States. Automotive companies, in particular, will face devastating costs, said.
Then there is uncertainty: “The chaotic form that is being implemented,” said Noland. Trump tariffs are the type of new, out again and slightly reduced. That is more difficult to model.
Normal people are beginning to notice, he said. In his own life, he saw a sudden price jump for the granola of a factory without nuts in Canada that he receives due to an allergy in the family. And it is not known where it ends.
“The American economy is slowing down,” he said. “In the last week, people have begun to worry that we can experience a recession.”
