A new report laid out in stark terms President Donald Trump’s toxic impact on the U.S. economy as the president boasts of a “golden age” and a country that is “hotter than ever.”
Bloomberg on Thursday wrote that the MSCI USA Index’s 16.3% surge screams champagne and caviar for investors looking to celebrate the new year — but beer and chips might be more realistic.
“Stacked up against the rest of the world, America’s stock market looks like an also ran: The MSCI USA’s advance pales next to the 29.2% surge in the MSCI All Country World Index excluding America,” the report noted. “To understand just how poor this performance was, consider that nothing of this magnitude has happened since 2009, when the global economy began to recover from the financial crisis. Stocks are no anomaly, US bonds and the dollar are relative losers as well.”
The report pinned the blame on Trump’s policy chaos, chiding that “America’s economic premium has vanished.”
OECD forecasts now predict US growth will slow to 2% in 2025, down from the 2.4% projection, before dropping further to 1.7% in 2026. Inflation expectations jumped from 2.1% to 2.7% this year, with 3% projected for 2026.
Meanwhile, CFO surveys show optimism matching pandemic panic territory and small employers are hemorrhaging jobs, with businesses with under 50 workers slashing 120,000 positions in November alone, the worst month since May 2020. Meanwhile, 717 companies filed for bankruptcy through November, the highest count since 2010.
“There is just not much going on right now, and we believe it’s all tied to the chaos and uncertainty coming from Washington,” one respondent wrote in the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas’s monthly manufacturing survey.
Consumer confidence, additionally, has cratered to pandemic lows, as desperate households burning through savings faster than their incomes rise. The personal savings rate hit 4%, the lowest since inflation raged in 2022.
“The sad thing is that the Trump administration knows the detrimental effects of its policies, with top officials including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick repeatedly pushing back the timing of when the economy will flourish, from definitely in 2025 to sometime in 2026,” the report lamented. “Rather than a new ‘Golden Age,’ it increasingly looks as though Americans were sold ‘Fool’s Gold.’”
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