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Tariffs and Market Turmoil: Is America Heading For a Recession?

Darrell McClain Season 1 Episode 451

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The economic anxiety gripping America takes center stage as we explore mounting signs of a potential recession driven by escalating trade tensions. Market slides, Wall Street jitters, and economists' warnings paint a concerning picture as the S&P 500 falls into correction territory amid the implementation of sweeping tariffs targeting dozens of countries.

Through a comprehensive analysis, we break down the warning signs of economic downturn - from job market shifts to consumer spending patterns - while providing historical context about previous recessions and their lasting impacts. The comparison between today's housing affordability crisis and the Great Depression offers a particularly sobering reality check: it was actually easier to purchase a home during America's worst economic disaster than it is for today's middle class.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink's observation that "nearly everyone" he speaks with expresses unprecedented economic anxiety aligns with America's plummeting position on global happiness rankings. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve's data shows Americans' ability to raise emergency funds has hit record lows, highlighting the financial vulnerability many households face as recession risks grow.

Beyond just identifying problems, we outline practical strategies to protect your finances during uncertain economic times. Financial advisors recommend paying down high-interest debt, building emergency savings, and exploring low-volatility investments - while avoiding panic-driven financial decisions that could make your situation worse.

Wondering how to navigate these challenging economic waters? Subscribe to hear more analysis on developing economic trends and practical advice for maintaining financial stability regardless of what markets do next.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Darrell McLean Show. I'm your host, darrell McLean, episode 451. We've been on a hiatus Not because I did not want to talk to you, but because my laptop crashed and I had to take it to a facility to get surgery, and it's been getting surgery for a while. Is the US economy headed towards a recession? Here is a playbook of what to look for the signs of a recession, how they affect the public and how can you prepare for one in case it comes. Concerns are heightening. The US economy is headed towards a recession as stocks markets slide amid Trump's administration's implementation of tariffs. President Donald Trump and his senior advisors appeared optimistic that an economic boom is on the horizon, even as economists warn that the likelihood of a recession is being amplified by the White House sweeping tariffs. Trump has not taken the possibility of a recession off the table, telling Fox News anchor Maria Bromberg Romo that he that the morning futures, that he hated predicting things like that, and that was back on March, the 9th. Wall Street, though, has been worried. The benchmark S&P 500 stock index fell into correction territory, defined as declining 10% from a recent peak Well. That was a week after a tech-heavy NASDAQ composite index did so.

Speaker 1:

The economic signs for recession. What are they? They, a recession is defined as six months of negative growth in a nation's economy, so I'll take some time before an official recession is declared by the national bureau of economic research. It takes time because which and the National Bureau of Economic Research is the official arbiter of US recession the group considers a number of economic factors, including what's happening in the job market, are with people's incomes, before making the determination that a country is in recession. But warning signs, which can include a surge in job losses, stalling wages and consumer spending less, would probably be evident beforehand. Now, claudia Shahim, a chief economist at New Century Advisors, say the job market can be an early indicator of a looming recession. The unemployment rate isn't the first thing to be affected, but once it starts rising, it tends to keep going. So far, the labor market has slowed slightly, but remains strong, with the unemployment rate at 4.1% At least, according to the February jobs report. However, most recent data did not contain all of the impact of Elon Musk's US doge services slashing the federal workforce.

Speaker 1:

Is the US headed for a recession? Economists aren't certain whether the United States is headed for one, for a recession, but they are warning that the risk is probably higher than they had previously thought, in a large part because of the White House's new policies. People are looking at tariffs, saying if we revisit the economic history books, tariffs have been a great in terms that there will be a recession, because it has not been great in terms of personal growth. Now that's coming from Micah Shoemaker and he's the head of macro strategy at Wells Fargo. The probability of a recession has gone up and it has not given or even 50%, but whether your forecast was a few weeks ago, it's definitely higher than 50% now. Now Goldman Sachs raises 12 months per seventh probability from 15% to 20%, noting that it saw policy changes as a key risk. The White House has the option to pull back if the downside of risk look more serious. A Goldman Sachs economic forecast said If policy is headed in the direction of our risk scenario or if the White House remain committed to these policies, even in the face of much worse data, recessions risk would rise further.

Speaker 1:

The JP Morgan analysis said that Trump's frequent changes to trade policy make forecasting growth and inflation this year an especially fraught exercise. When was the US's last recession and how long did it last? The average modern day recession has lasted 11 months. According to data from the MBER. The last US recession, which was also the shortest in US history, was the economic downturn of March of April of 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic. It was not declared a recession by the NBER until July of 2021. Now, before that, it was actually the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009,. And that lasted for 18 months. It is considered to be the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression.

Speaker 1:

Of course, we have to ask can tariffs cause a recession? Because that's what's going on now. So Trump's proposed tariffs could have a big impact on the economy, depending on the duration and any potential retaliation from trading partners. According to economists from BNP Paribas, in the event of an uncontrolled tit-for-tat trade war, a sharp decline in business sentiment is possible. If large enough, could be recessionary. Now BNP wrote in a market 360 analysis. Bnp Paribas warned that the larger tariff, the greater the economic costs it will have. The greater the economic costs it will have. The impact, it said, will probably be felt by the average of US consumers. The last tariffs are expected to cost the typical American household more than $1,200 a year, according to the Peterson Institute for International economics. Even if tariffs are temporary, simply leveraging them as a negotiating tool will cause uncertainty to businesses and firms hiring or investment decisions.

Speaker 1:

How do the recessions affect the public? Recessions typically correlate with the expansive job losses which spark financial problems that can lead to evictions or foreclosures. The contracted job markets of a recession also hurt those who keep their jobs, making it harder to find a new job or get a raise. Recession often feel they cannot afford to be choosy about employment and will accept low starting pay that can set back their earnings for years to come. At the end of the day, recessions are bad because people suffer financially, said Sham, and this was being told to the Washington Post back in 2022. They're a big hit and they happen to touch everyone.

Speaker 1:

Why and what should you do to protect your finances before recession? Now, economics and financial advisors say that the prudent move is often to tighten your purse strings to save money, but they also warn that doing so can actually hasten a recession because it takes money out of the economy. When they're not spending, they're not creating income for other people, george Washington University economic professor, tara Sinclair, said back in 2022. Michael Signatary, the Post's personal finance columnist, offered seven tips to prepare for a recession back in 2022. Michael Signatary, the Post's personal finance columnist, offered seven tips to prepare for a recession back in 2022. Among them pay off credit card debt, build up your savings, look at low volatility options such as bonds, and don't panic. What you shouldn't do is make moves based on fear that can put you in a worse position financially. She wrote.

Speaker 1:

So a lot of trade talk going on, trump. Obviously we're in the midst of a trade war with several countries, one of the biggest that I remember seeing in a long time the United States versus 192 other countries. So obviously people panicked a lot when the stock market started to go down, because that's the first effect. You see, it seems like Trump panicked when the bond market started to go down, because the bond market is actually the boss of the markets. So now we know, or at least we have answered some of the questions Is the US economy headed towards a recession, what to look for over the next few months or so, and what to do to prepare yourself to be safe? Let's get some quick headlines. So On April 9, 2025, the escalating trade war between the US and China reached a new peak as China announced retalitat measures, with Trump's tariffs also targeting 60 other countries deemed worst offenders in trade practices, including Japan, south Korea and Cambodia, with tariffs ranging up to 49%.

Speaker 1:

The US tariffs aim to address trade imbalances, but they've sparked global economic concerns. European and Asian markets saw significant declines, with investors selling US government bonds traditionallya safe haven, leading to a spike in US borrowing rates. Brent crude oil prices dropped below $60 a barrel, the lowest since February 2021, potentially affecting the fuel and supply costs worldwide. A new study has actually come out and it shows that and this is a study that shows that um eliminating processed food from the children's diet reduces adhd symptoms by 53 percent. A study published in the lancet found that the dietary intervention, specifically removing proposed processed foods, addict and artificial coloring, significantly reduced attention deficit hyperactivity disorders, so ADHD, in children. Researchers observed improved behavior of birthless, supporting the growing link between diet and mental health in young individuals. In young individuals, the median annual pay during the Great Depression was 32% of the cost of the average home. Today it's 19%. That means that pay relatively to home costs made it easier to buy a home during the Great Depression than it is right now. Let that sink in than it is right now. Let that sink.

Speaker 1:

In United States, households are running out of emergency funds. It's becoming harder for Americans to raise funds in case of an emergency. According to the New York Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Expectations, the average likelihood of Americans being able to come up with $2,000 within a month if an unexpected need arose hit 62.7% in February. That's the lowest level since that survey began tracking the data point in October of 2015. The United States has never been more unhappy.

Speaker 1:

A new report finds Finland was named the happiest country in the world for the eight years in a row, according to the World Happiness Report in 2025, published on Thursday. When it comes to decreasing happiness and growing unhappiness, the United States has dropped to its lowest ever position, at 24, having previously peaked at 11 place in 2012. Black Rocks CEO Larry Fink says almost everyone he talks to is more anxious about the economy than any time in recent memory. Everyone keeps telling the CEO of the world's largest asset manager how they're worried about the United States economy. I hear from nearly every client, nearly every leader, nearly every person I talk to. Blackrock CEO Larry Fink wrote in an AOL letter on Monday they're more anxious about the economy than any time in recent memory. Flink's comments came out Monday when the stocks market slipped as soon as it opened and investors feared impending tariffs could further hurt the United States economy. Like when they wanted to privatize the British railroads, the technique was defund them and then, when they don't work, people get angry and say let's do something.

Speaker 2:

So you hand it over to private enterprise, which totally ruins them, and then the state has to come back in at big cost and try to reconstruct it somehow. It's known as privatization, and that's exactly what's happening with Social Security. It's in good shape. Now, when you read in the newspapers as you do, that the big problem of the deficit is entitlements and Social Security, medicare, medicaid, social Security is a zero problem. For one thing, it doesn't add anything to the deficit because people pay for it, and for another thing, it's in pretty good shape.

Speaker 2:

Certainly, the last of the famous baby boomers will be gone before there's any problem in it. That's why there's a big payroll tax increase 30 years ago to ensure that. But if it's defunded it'll be a problem. Then there'll be pressure to privatize it. That's a huge bonanza for the financial institutions. They'll put trillions of dollars into their hands which they can then use to make a ton of money with risky investments which are therefore very profitable. And when it tanks, as it will, when the economy tanks, there's a technique you pick up your copies of Milton Friedman and Hayek and Ayn Rand and you run to the nanny state that you've nurtured and you make sure that they bail you out. That's really existing capitalism and it means that the scam can go on.

Speaker 3:

We didn't give a hoot about democracy. I mean, it was fine if a government was elected and would cooperate with us, but if it didn't, then democracy didn't mean a thing to us and I don't think it means a thing today. The true goal of the United States government is control, and they feel that if the United States did not control the governments of Latin America then somebody else would. And the principle of government by the people, for the people, other people, that is just silly.

Speaker 4:

300 million stores are packed with Japanese products. The Japanese seem to control electronics, but today the Reagan administration slapped a huge tariff on $300 million worth of Japanese goods On the list color TV sets, laptop computers, power tools and calculators. This tariff is 100%. That means a TV that cost a store, say $300, will now cost $600.

Speaker 3:

I think it's firing a shot over the bottle, and then we'll see how they react to it.

Speaker 4:

The US General Accounting Office reported yesterday, the Japanese violated an agreement they signed with our government last year. They're dumping microchips at prices below cost and that's hurting American producers. Because of that, Reagan imposed the tariff.

Speaker 3:

Consumers are going to be paying a lot more money for these goods, and I would expect that to happen immediately.

Speaker 4:

But Highland expects little, or?

Speaker 3:

no effect. A lot of major brands are made are Japanese companies, but they're manufactured in the United States.

Speaker 4:

And those products will not be affected. The tariffs affect less than one-half of one percent of all the goods Japan sends to this country. According to Senator Benson, the tariff is little and it's late, but he hopes it sends a message that this time this country will visit.

Speaker 1:

Superstores are packed. So when this happened in 1987, the US slapped the 100% tariff on Japan goods and it actually caused a crash. Six months later, the stock market crashed on what has been called Black Monday, and it was arguably the worst crash in history. Now, when it comes to some of the market news sorry about that Warren Buffett's the Oracle from Omaha Nance Burr is up so far in 2025. The worst of the world's top 15 wealthiest people have all lost money. So Trump's terrorist announcements sparked global sell-off, leading to losses for many investors across the world.

Speaker 1:

The world's richest people saw tens of billions of dollars wiped from their net worths in a matter of days. One notable exception was Berkshire Hathaway CEO, warren Buffett, whose net worth has grown by $11.5 billion since the start of 2025, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Buffett is currently ranked as the world's fourth wealthiest person by Bloomberg, with a net worth of $154 billion from the six wealthiest on Monday. Of the top 18 individuals on the list, the investing icon is the only one who's estimating personal wealth has grown this year as of Tuesday morning. So if you want to see how many other notable names on the list have lost and find out how Buffett is defying. You can go to Bloombergcom and check it out. Historically, the most terrible things war, genocide and slavery have resulted from disobedience, no, but from obedience.

Speaker 2:

This quote comes from the World War II veteran, the college professor, the late Howard Zinn. I'm worth over a hundred billion dollars and a very significant portion of my wealth was made from owning Coca-Cola stock. We own roughly 400 million shares and that yields Berkshire a little less than a billion dollars a year in dividends. Now you probably wouldn't believe it, but Coca-Cola's first year in business they only sold about 25 bottles. That should be a testament to anyone here listening that business is a marathon, not a sprint. Success takes time, persistence and continuous effort. Just because you don't see immediate results doesn't mean you're not on the right path. Keep pushing forward.

Speaker 1:

So that's from the Oracle, from Omaha, warren Buffett, richest Americans, big business, might welcome some IRS cuts.

Speaker 5:

This news story was written by Shannon Najmabadi. Richest Americans big businesses might welcome IRS cuts. Officials say About 7% of its workers have been let go and more cuts are expected. The Internal Revenue Service's burgeoning efforts to more closely inspect the taxes of some of the country's richest people and most powerful companies are stalling because of layoffs imposed by the Trump administration. Current and former IRS employees say the IRS terminated about 7% of its roughly 100 000-person workforce in February, including at least 5,000 in the enforcement and collections divisions. More layoffs are expected, which would slice staff by almost 20%, according to instructions from the US Doge Service. Meanwhile, tax investigators working on drugs and criminal syndicates may be reassigned to help the Department of Homeland Security. Current and former employees don't know who will take on pending audits amid these staff cuts, but some say one demographic stands to benefit the wealthy 100 percent, said Anthony Kim, a longtime IRS attorney now in private practice.

Speaker 5:

It's a sharp turnaround from 2022, when Congress gave the IRS $80 billion over a decade under the Inflation Reduction Act, including funds to beef up its auditing of the wealthiest Americans. The agency hired new employees and bulked up units trained to detangle some of the most complicated corporate returns, which can run hundreds or thousands of pages. It's not clear how many laid off employees were specifically auditing big businesses, but tax experts say the cuts undermine the agency's much touted effort to crack down on wealthier Americans, who for years have faced slimmer and slimmer odds of being audited and generally have more resources to respond than middle and low income taxpayers. We do get outgunned, there is no other way to say it. Former IRS commissioner Charles Reddick said in congressional testimony in 2021,. Others say it's like having shovels and digging holes, said IRS agent David Caron, who leads the local Treasury Employees Union in Arkansas and Louisiana. You have less people to dig the holes now, so there's only so much the remaining people can dig. Critics of the agency, however, say the IRS has a culture of conducting fishing expeditions that hit households or small businesses, or point to watchdog reports that have questioned IRS expenditures and its ability to stay focused on high-income filers. Are taxpayers supposed to trust the repeatedly broken assertion that the IRS is only putting the screws to Scrooge McDuck and Rich Uncle Pennybags, said John Karch with anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform.

Speaker 5:

The loss of probationary employees, some of whom have specialized experience in valuation, engineering or corporate tax law, comes amid a broader shakeup at the agency that has destabilized day-to-day operations. According to interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees, overnight travel has been suspended, limiting revenue agents' ability to conduct in-person examinations or locate documents for audits. According to seven employees, employees have been told not to open new business cases. Four employees said Some big business cases have already been closed. According to a senior manager who said he has spent the last two years hiring employees from the private sector and a transformation and strategy office that oversaw new agency initiatives, those funded with the $80 billion appropriation was recently disbanded. According to a former agency official In West Virginia, four of the state's nine revenue agents were laid off in February, said Matt Kirk, a revenue agent and another union chapter leader. He estimated the laid-off employees had about 40 cases between them each, looking at people making $400,000 or more. With those losses, we don't have the manpower to absorb that volume of cases, kirk said.

Speaker 5:

White House spokeswoman Liz Houston said that Trump is focused on saving tax dollars, eliminating bloat and increasing the agency's efficiency, in contrast to President Joe Biden's wildly unpopular plan to hire thousands of additional IRS agents. Calling the premise of this story incorrect, a Treasury Department spokesperson said the agency is considering major investments in modernization to more accurately target suspected tax evaders and is working on other initiatives to improve compliance and taxpayer customer service and to ensure a smooth filing season. However, no plan has been approved yet. The spokesperson said Republican pushback. Conservatives have long targeted the IRS, arguing a more muscular tax agency would harass middle-class Americans. Trump's nominee to lead the agency, billy Long, has supported abolishing the IRS. Republican lawmakers have used those arguments to justify cuts and so far have rescinded or frozen half of the $80 billion the agency was allocated.

Speaker 5:

Some former officials say layoffs don't mean audits of wealthy Americans have to go down. The agency, for example, could retrain and reassign agents who look at small businesses to keep scrutinizing the highest income earners, said David Cotter, who was acting IRS commissioner during part of President Donald Trump's first term. As long as they've got auditors available, they've got choices to make, he said. Others say the cuts will have a more limited effect, given that some employees were still training and not carrying full caseloads, or that the layoffs forced the IRS to rethink its operations or rely more on technology. Proponents of more IRS funding, however, say the agency offers a solid return on investment, making layoffs there counterproductive. Each dollar the IRS spends tracking down unpaid tax dollars from the wealthiest 10% generally brings in $12 or more, according to one National Bureau of Economic Research study. If you're concerned about the deficit, then the last thing in the world you want to do is hamstring your revenue agents and your revenue arm, said John Koskinen, irs commissioner under President Barack Obama.

Speaker 5:

How much tax revenue goes uncollected is the subject of wide-ranging estimates running from about $500 million to $1 trillion each year. Audits conducted by the IRS's large business division, which handles some of the agency's most sophisticated tax matters, can recover many millions of dollars, said Reddick, who was IRS Commissioner from 2018 to 2022. It would not be unusual, he said, for such a case to involve a disputed issue in the range of more than $500 million. One new employee, Wesley Stanovsek, had three open cases when he was laid off from an IRS global high wealth division that was beefed up after the 2022 funding became available. Two of the cases involved enterprises with more than one tax filer, he said. He estimates about 20 employees, of whom 5 to 10 worked on big business cases, were also terminated from the Columbus Ohio office where he was employed.

Speaker 5:

John Witkowski, a recent hire, who was laid off in February, a week after finishing the agency's training program expects managers will end up dismissing some of the probationary employees' cases because of staffing shortages. He left behind four cases, each for a filer with more than $250 million in annual assets, he said More than two dozen employees also were laid off in his West Coast office. He said I imagine they'll say, hey, you won the audit lottery, we're just going to close your case and let it go. Witkowski said Specialists hired to help audit sophisticated cases such as a wind turbine project eligible for tax credits were also laid off. That includes engineer Vanessa Rollins and appraiser Jack McCumber, who left behind a combined seven cases when they were let go from their offices in Chicago and Seattle respectively.

Speaker 5:

The amount of cases that engineering specialists are able to help audit will just completely plummet, said Rollins, who estimates that seven engineers in the Illinois office about half were laid off or accepted deferred resignation offers this year. Beating the odds, the IRS's scrutiny of big businesses has fallen in recent decades, driven in part by budget cuts after the GOP gained a majority in the House in 2010. In the mid-1990s, the agency audited returns for about 50% of companies with $250 million or more in assets. That rate dropped to 8.8 percent in the 2019 tax year. According to an IRS document, the number of revenue agents shrank from 14,600 to 8,700 between the 2010-2019 fiscal years. By the time the Inflation Reduction Act passed, there was one IRS examiner reviewing returns for every 150 millionaires and large corporations, former IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel told a congressional committee in 2024. Picture that one IRS auditor or examiner backing in 150 truckloads of paper, he said. Unlike typical salaried workers, most ultra-wealthy filers don't have an employer automatically withholding federal income taxes on paychecks or a W-2 listing their earned income. Instead, they may have thousands of partners, international operations and a range of investments. Partnerships have become more common and often have obfuscated structures with 20 or more layers. According to the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. Fewer than 0.2% of partnerships were audited in recent years odds akin to getting hit by a meteorite, senator Ron Wyden, democrat Oregon, said in 2021.

Speaker 5:

Kim, the former IRS attorney, said the agency can face a total mismatch in resources when auditing a filer with private accountants and attorneys. While working at a Big Four accounting firm, kim once supervised a team of four people who sent 10 to 15 boxes of documents to the sole IRS agent assigned to audit their client. He saw what it was like on the other side when he worked in the IRS's Office of Chief Counsel years later and was told there was no budget for him to accompany a revenue agent to a meeting with a tax filer's representatives. Kim, now in private practice and mostly working with small businesses, tells clients that there are pros and cons to the layoffs. On one hand, the tax agents might be too drained or overworked to pursue their audit. On the other, a pending audit might just sit there and you don't get the resolution quickly. Either way, he said the system's broken from the inside. Jeff Stein contributed to this report.

Speaker 1:

So, look, a lot of people, when those 88, look, I want to say it was something very high, 88,000, which could be wrong IRS agents were hired, I think a lot of people thought that they were hired to go after Main Street and the middle class and I don't think they realized that what actually happens is because a lot of the cuts end up happening at the IRS. Because a lot of the cuts end up happening at the IRS, instead of them going after what we have labeled as white-collar crime, the resources will instead be used to go after the middle class and the working poor. The middle class and the working poor, because they're not going to have more complicated, uh, taxes. They're not going to have a team of lawyers who are doing everything they can to somewhat uh hide what's going on. They're not going to have a company who sends in 15 boxes to one agent because they're getting audited. A lot of people saw this as a win when the cuts came to the IRS. I kind of think it's one of those things where I think that people somewhat had been played to, where they're firing a certain amount of staff at this agency in order to be able to continue to fleece the police. Just my thoughts on the topic.

Speaker 1:

A lot of people don't like government agencies, but a lot of people also don't fully understand, and I think that's because the government does a bad job of explaining. A lot of people don't fully understand what certain government agencies do. Lot of people don't fully understand what certain government agencies do and the distrust in institutions are because a lot of people don't feel the material gain or the material benefit from the institutions in their everyday uh operations. Um, I watch this show. One of one of my favorites is actually american greed and it's a crime type show but it attracts uh white collar, the type to climb some some blue collar crime on there, but all in the financial realm.

Speaker 1:

Most of the time when people are caught doing something wrong, it's by the irs, it's by the FBI, it's some fraud agency. And then we've got to remember famous gangster, famous gangster Al Capone was caught at the end of the day by the IRS. We're going to be back this week, got to get some catching up. Got a lot of things going on, got a lot to talk about. Thank you for tuning in and I'll see you on the next episode.