The Media Kept Rooting For A Tariff-Driven Recession. The Data Keep Disappointing Them
The propaganda press has spent the last few weeks desperately trying to convince Americans that there was an impending recession due to President Donald Trump’s pro-America agenda that included levying tariffs on countries ripping off the United States.
“Companies buying foreign products pay the tariffs imposed on them — and, as a result, face higher costs that are typically passed on to customers,” one Associated Press article read.
NBC News warned that “Trump’s new tariffs will hit lower-income households the hardest.”
CNN said, “Trump’s tariffs will be bad for you. And you, and you, and you, and you.”
Another CNN headline read: “Trump chaos has already damaged the economy. It may be too late to fix it.”
MSNBC went with an op-ed titled “Trump’s tariffs are incoherent and destructive.”
The examples are endless. But on Thursday, that narrative crumbled.
Axios, citing newly released data, reported that there are not signs “of recessionary or inflationary conditions implied by business and consumer surveys.”
The data, according to Axios, show “steady retail sales and a surprising drop in wholesale prices in April.” Data also reportedly indicate that “spending at restaurants and bars, among the few service-sector categories in the retail sales report, rose by 1.2% in April.”
“The Producer Price Index … showed little sign of tariff-related price pressures that businesses have warned about,” the report continued.
On Monday JPMorgan Chase & Co. abandoned its earlier prediction that the U.S. would fall into a recession.
Meanwhile the Consumer Price Index (CPI) report released on Tuesday indicates that inflation rose just 2.3 percent year-over-year in April — the lowest annual increase since February 2021, when President Joe Biden was in office.
Notably, following the tariff-hysteria peddled by the propaganda press, surveys allegedly showed Americans were worried about Trump’s handling of the economy. A Pew Research Center survey of 3,589 people found that 55 percent of adults were not confident, as Axios put it, that “Trump can make good decisions about economic policy.”
It was a striking reversal. As Axios noted at the time, “Over 10 years in and around public office, and despite all the other controversies surrounding him, one issue where people have consistently given Trump the benefit of the doubt was in his handling of economic affairs.”
“Not anymore,” Axios declared.
But what had actually changed? Not the fundamentals — and certainly not Trump’s track record. Trump was still a widely successful businessman and reelected president with no interest in tanking his own legacy. There was no catastrophic policy shift from his campaign promises either — just a relentless media blitz designed to stir panic and shake public confidence.
And it worked — briefly. Until reality got in the way. After weeks of breathless predictions of economic doom, the data are in. The recession the media tried to will into existence never showed up.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
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