The Financial Times’s chief data reporter noted in an X thread (with more than 2 million views) that economic uncertainty now rivals that at the height of the pandemic, consumer expectations are the worst in over 40 years, and inflationary expectations are as high as they were at peak inflation under Biden. Even as Trump’s sudden reversal helped the markets bounce partway back, the dogmatism and sloppiness on display have raised questions—and sparked surprising criticism from Trump allies like Ted Cruz, Bill Ackman, and Elon Musk.
Now, Trump has demonstrated an uncanny ability to overcome long odds for a decade. And it’s been years since chaos became as much a part of the Trump brand as mammoth hotel marquees.
But, if 401(k)s keep shrinking, recession looms, or inflation takes off, there could be big implications for Trump’s agenda—especially his ambitious education program. His efforts to take on higher education in particular are high-profile and perceived as unprecedented. They’ve benefited enormously from Trump’s relative popularity and the sense that he’s taking care of business. That could change. After the tumultuous tariff rollout, Michael Brendan Dougherty, an erstwhile Trump ally, warned, “Presidents need to carefully protect their image as competent leaders when pursuing their signature policies . . . The more that a president seems to be on an ideological crusade—whether Clinton before 1994, Bush before 2006, or Obama before 2010—the more likely he is to be hammered for it.”
Trump’s early wins could prove fragile. His team has thus far struggled to explain how it intends to make a leaner Department of Education work effectively, and it has trampled the law in levying its extraordinary demands on universities. As a result, the administration risks being blamed for all manner of problems with FAFSA, student loans, or IDEA. The concessions it’s wrung from colleges could readily be reversed in the courts. On that count, the tariff rollout offered a disconcerting window into how this White House does business. No one inside or outside the Oval Office knew what the policy would be until hours before the announcement. Senior officials repeatedly disagreed about whether the tariffs were supposed to be permanent or what they were even designed to accomplish. The president said the tariffs would be reciprocal. They’re not. The plan featured sloppy math, rates distorted by typos, and new levies on two uninhabited islands. Oh, and the administration embraced this strategy with little forethought as to how things would play out. As the New York Times’s David Sanger reported last week, “Several senior officials conceded that they had spent only a few days considering how the economic earthquake might have second-order effects.”
