The economy doesn't get rewired overnight
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Illustration: Gabriella Turrisi/Axios
After the economic and market tumult of the last month, it's a reasonable time to take a deep breath. Despite it all, April jobs numbers were solid and the stock market has mostly recovered.
- But it may be a false calm.
The big picture: Seismic economic shifts — of the kind that look to have been set in motion by trade war escalation — usually ripple through the economy only over the course of months, even when the precipitating event is sudden.
- Whether this episode turns out to be a temporary hiccup or a painful recession, we shouldn't expect to see clear-cut evidence in the data for quite some time.
- Similarly, while the stock market rally from the recent April 8 low — and accompanying stabilization in the bond market — has been fast and furious, it's not uncommon for asset prices to retrace losses, at least temporarily, in times of economic disruption.
State of play: President Trump announced aggressive reciprocal tariffs on April 2, before announcing a 90-day suspension a week later. It came after global investors dumped dollar assets, including Treasury bonds.
- But it's still an open question how or when there will be de-escalation, particularly with China, where 145% import taxes are in place and inbound cargo is set to plunge in the coming weeks.
- The Trump team is determined to rewire the global economy, arguing that tariffs will lead to more domestic manufacturing and a new stream of revenue to the U.S. government, even if there is pain as Americans adjust to fewer cheap consumer goods.
- Whatever the eventual implications of this agenda, it is unsurprising that it hasn't played out in the economic data overnight.
Flashback: The pandemic's onset might be fresh in mind as a huge economic shift that transformed the economy in an instant. But it is more historically normal for these things to take time.
- What became known as the Global Financial Crisis started in earnest in the summer of 2007 as global money markets broke down. But the stock market reached a new peak in October 2007, and the U.S. economy kept growing through year-end.
- The dot-com bubble peaked in March of 2000, but it wasn't until a full year after that the United States entered a recession.
The same applies to episodes that involved serious financial and economic stress but did not turn into U.S. recessions.
- A rally in the dollar in the summer of 2015 created a global credit squeeze that caused economic distress in China and in other emerging markets. But it didn't create blowback to U.S. agriculture, energy, and manufacturing sectors until early 2016.
The bottom line: Will the trade wars lead to a U.S. recession? That part we don't know.
- What we do know is that it will take months to play out as business and consumers adjust their behaviors to reflect the new reality of global commerce.
