“If I win, you are three days away from the best jobs, the biggest paychecks, and the brightest economic future the world has ever seen.”
—Trump, on the eve of the 2024 election
It turns out that ushering in the biggest economic boom in capitalism’s history is easier said than done. No president—Trump included—can control the anarchic capitalist system. Two months into his presidency, almost no one seems to believe their economic situation is going to improve.
Bracing for more instability
Contrary to the delusions of many bourgeois journalists, Trump did not “inherit a solid economy.” As recent analyses by Politico and other outlets have shown, official government economic statistics can be wildly misleading. Voters were right: the US economy is in a very sorry state.
Trump rode to power on the back of skillful appeals to ordinary Americans’ economic discontent. Tens of millions had seen their living standards continue to deteriorate under the Democrats and were willing to try any alternative to the status quo.
Now talk of recession is already in the air, and Trump himself refuses to rule out the possibility. “I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition because what we’re doing is very big,” he said.
His ominous words sparked stock market chaos, but it’s not just investors who are worried. After suffering four years of Bidenomics, millions of workers—including many who voted for Trump—are faced with further economic instability.
A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll points to Trumpism’s Achilles heel. The economy was the number one reason people voted for him, and it’s widely believed that improving it should be his number one priority. Yet, voters are most disenchanted with this aspect of his presidency. As Reuters wrote:
44% of respondents said they approved of the job Trump was doing as president, unchanged from a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted March 3–4. He got particularly weak marks on the issue of the cost of living, where just 32% of respondents approved of his performance. And most of them—70% including nine in 10 Democrats and six in 10 Republicans—said they expected higher tariffs will make groceries and other regular purchases more expensive …
Inflation was far and away the top concern of respondents to the poll. Six in ten respondents said that was the issue they thought Trump should prioritize, far more than those who cited other presidential priorities including reducing the size of government, addressing immigration and fighting crime.
In a March poll by The Guardian, 72% of Americans reported that they’re concerned about tariffs—up from 61% in January. This includes 57% of Republican voters. Nearly 90% of Democrats and 75% of independents say they worry about a potential recession—a sentiment shared by 65% of Republicans. Meanwhile, supermajorities of Democrats (91%), independents (88%), and Republicans (82%) said they are concerned about the economy and inflation.
Workers preemptively tightening the belt
The business press is bursting with anxiety over so-called “consumer sentiment”—i.e., the capacity and willingness of American workers to buy commodities and keep the capitalist economy chugging along.
“Consumer Angst Is Striking All Income Levels,” read a recent Wall Street Journal headline. “Signs of weakness are showing up in spending on everything from basics to luxuries.” The article goes on to explain that companies such as Walmart, McDonald’s, Dollar General, Target, Kohl’s, Macy’s, and American Airlines are all reporting comparatively weak sales figures for the first few months of 2025:
Consumers at all income levels are pulling back, and on all sorts of purchases. Americans are getting more worried about the economy. The University of Michigan on Friday reported that in a preliminary reading its index of consumer sentiment fell to its lowest level since November 2022 this month, “with declines seen consistently across all groups by age, education, income, wealth, political affiliations, and geographic regions.”
It isn’t all about tariff fears, or even some broader sense of uncertainty. Many also have less cold hard cash on hand. Checking and savings deposit balances across all income levels have declined over the 12-month period through February and are getting closer to inflation-adjusted 2019 levels … Wage growth for all income groups has slowed over the past year, per data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
In March, long-term inflation expectations hit their highest rate since 1993—showing that a large swath of American workers don’t expect Trump to fulfill his promise to make inflation “vanish completely.”
Buried in debt
Since the 1980s, credit has played a huge role in buoying the US economy—pushing it past its natural limits and temporarily averting economic crises. Now, the accumulated debt weighs on the economy, preparing the way for an even deeper catastrophe.
The Wall Street Journal observes:
American consumers and their credit cards have helped the US economy weather many rough moments. Now, as recession fears resurface, the worry is that they might be maxed out …
Investors suddenly have fresh concerns. For one, Americans’ inflation-adjusted debt burdens are starting to grow further beyond pre-pandemic levels on a per-household basis. As of the fourth quarter of 2024, the average household’s credit card debt surpassed $10,000, adjusted for inflation, for the first time since 2009, according to data compiled by consumer-finance website WalletHub.
In other words, before a recession has even hit, the burden of personal credit is already weighing on millions of working-class households.
Wall Street on edge
The wishful thinking of certain layers of the capitalist class about a “pro-business president” is also dissipating. Trump’s brazen and unpredictable method of imposing and then revoking tariffs always made the capitalists uneasy.
From their point of view, tariffs are increasingly necessary—globalization is going into reverse and giving rise to economic nationalism across the world. But they would prefer a more measured way of rolling them out. Above all, they want a “stable business environment,” which Trump’s constant U-turns and policy reversals cannot provide.
When Trump was elected, they hoped he’d use tariff threats as a bargaining chip in his negotiations with China. At the time, Bloomberg predicted that “Trump views tariffs as a bargaining tool. He may deny they pose risks to growth, inflation, and corporate profits. Markets will beg to differ. With companies like Apple, Inc. in the firing line, a major drop in stock prices could give Trump pause.”
But to their horror, the capitalists are learning that Trump is more determined and prepared to implement his program this time around. The Financial Times editorial board laments:
It now appears that neither a slowing economy nor plunging stock prices are enough to deter US President Donald Trump from his radical economic agenda. Beyond promising to buy a Tesla to prop up the beleaguered stock of Elon Musk’s enterprise, he is in fact doubling down. Asked about the economic and market turbulence, the self-proclaimed “tariff man” argues that a “period of transition” may be necessary as his administration brings “wealth back to America.” It is “a detox period” according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The cleanse has, so far, raised the specter of stagflation, wiped $5 trillion off the S&P 500, and undermined the nation’s standing with global investors.
These symptoms of economic decline and instability all point to the terminal sickness of American capitalism, and predate Trump and Biden alike.
Prepare for class struggle
Communists study the economic situation with a view toward understanding its effect on mass consciousness. We take the long view of history and should not get overly caught up in the month-to-month figures. Whether recession strikes this year or takes longer to materialize, we know it’s coming at some point. Our task is not to speculate about the timing, but to urgently prepare for this period of general instability by building the party.
Marxists have long explained that it is not the absolute level of want, but above all, the immense instability of the declining capitalist system that pushes workers towards class struggle—and eventually revolution. When the next economic downturn hits, the impact on consciousness will not be a simple repetition of 2008 or 2020. It will be compounded by those past experiences, further solidifying the perception that the “American dream” is dead, and class struggle is the only way forward.