The economy is contracting, companies are reporting losses and consumers are tightening their belts.
As dour as the economic data has been this week, President Trump continues to insist his policies are working.
Ahead of a closely watched — and unpredictable — jobs report released Friday morning, Mr. Trump has sought to take an early victory lap for his first 100 days in office, dismissing the many signs indicating the U.S. economy may be on the cusp of a painful downturn.
Instead, Mr. Trump has heralded his pursuit of steep tariffs and tax cuts as the ingredients for an imminent boom. And he has pinned the blame for any turbulence on his predecessor, President Joseph R. Biden, despite the economy being quite strong when Mr. Trump inherited it.
“This is Biden’s economy because we took over on Jan. 20,” Mr. Trump said on Wednesday during a speech at the White House, even as he encouraged the public to “get us a little bit of time to get moving.”
This week, the U.S. government reported that the nation’s gross domestic product, a measure of its economic output, slowed in the first three months of the year. The 0.3 percent decline followed years of steady growth after the coronavirus pandemic.
Some of the country’s largest consumer-oriented companies, including McDonald’s and PepsiCo, reported lower sales in the last quarter, suggesting consumers are starting to spend less as they become more anxious about the economy. General Motors warned analysts on Thursday about losses on the horizon, foreshadowing a costly disruption throughout the auto industry. Japan slashed its growth outlook, a move hinting at the widening fallout from Mr. Trump’s trade policies. And U.S. financial markets recorded their worst first 100 days of any presidency in about a half century as investors remained jittery about the trade war.
Each of the developments appeared to signify an economy at its tipping point, but the president largely swatted away those sour marks this week. In a series of speeches and public appearances, he maintained that his tariffs — including the eye-watering 145 percent rate specifically applied to goods from China — had already forced nations to negotiate deals while encouraging more companies to invest in U.S.-based manufacturing.
“They’ve drained us — now, we’re doing it to them,” Mr. Trump said at a rally in Michigan on Tuesday.
But the administration has not yet announced any trade agreements, nor has the president acknowledged any substantive talks with China. This week, Mr. Trump eased some, but not all, of his tariffs on automakers, in a bid to spare the industry from deep financial pain. But he also promised to “slaughter” those companies unless they quickly started making more of their products in the United States.
In an interview that aired Tuesday evening on ABC, Mr. Trump stood by his previous assertion that there would be a “transition period” for the economy. His comments seemed to echo his earlier contention that he could not rule out a recession stemming from his tariff policies.
Still, the president added, “I think great times are ahead.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump dismissed the effects of rising prices. At a cabinet meeting, he doubled down on his plan to apply tariffs to lower-valued products from China and other countries that had for years exploited a legal loophole that exempted them from having to pay duties.
“You know, somebody said, ‘Oh, the shelves are going to be open. Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know? And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally,” Mr. Trump said. “They have ships that are loaded up with stuff, much of which, not all of it, but much of which we don’t need.”
He later added: “I really believe that the next 100 days is going to be even better than this.”
