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The 2026 economy could have been great — if not for Trump

The hidden costs of the president’s economic policies.

President Donald Trump has put the US economy through the wringer.

Since taking office, he has:

Imposed large and evershifting tariffs on imports, thereby driving up consumers’ costs and businesses’ uncertainty.

Engineered a collapse in both legal and unauthorized immigration, which has undermined growth and labor specialization.

Manufactured a global energy crisis that has pushed up Americans’ gas prices while threatening to plunge the world into a recession.

And yet, the American economy keeps trudging forward like a gut-shot zombie, damaged but undeterred by the bullets it has absorbed.

US GDP rose at a 2 percent annual rate in the first quarter of 2026 and a 2.1 percent pace in 2025, far outstripping growth in most other advanced economies. Meanwhile, America’s unemployment rate remains low by historical standards at 4.3 percent. And wages rose faster than inflation throughout 2025.

To be sure, the economic indicators aren’t all sunny. Last month, for the first time since 2023, real wages in the US fell as annual inflation hit 3.8 percent.

Nevertheless, if you told an economist in January 2025 that America’s new president would launch a haphazard global trade war, throttle legal immigration, and launch a conflict with Iran that indefinitely shuttered the Strait of Hormuz — then asked that expert to guess what the US economy would look like in May 2026 — they almost certainly would have sketched a far grimmer scenario than the one we’re currently living through.

Some will look at all this and conclude that Trump’s trade, immigration, and foreign policies weren’t that costly after all.

Another interpretation, however, is that Trump could have presided........

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