Trump Insists Economy Not About to Explode as Banks Warn Differently

Banks are predicting a downturn for the American economy.

Goldman Sachs raised its 12-month recession probability from 20 percent to 30 percent on Monday, reported Reuters. The banking giant also downgraded American gross domestic product growth forecast from 2 percent to 1.5 percent, and projected three interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve.

In a Sunday note to its investors, Goldman speculated that the average U.S. tariff rate will rise 15 percent points over the next year, 5 percent higher than it previously predicted. That’s thanks to Donald Trump’s decision to spark a global trade war.

“Almost the entire [tariff rate] revision reflects a more aggressive assumption for ‘reciprocal’ tariffs,” the brokerage firm wrote in a memo obtained by Reuters.

Trump has driven a wedge in America’s trade and military alliances by suddenly imposing large tariffs on the nation’s longtime partners. On Thursday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that his country’s cozy relationship with the U.S. had come to an end and that they would wean themselves off American products and services “at speeds we haven’t seen in generations.”

The seismic diplomatic shift followed another tariff announcement by the Trump administration, this time imposing a 25 percent hike on auto imports. Carney called the levy—which will take effect on vehicle imports April 3 and vehicle parts in May—a “direct attack” on Canada, but the news also immediately hit America’s Big Three automakers, whose stock dropped multiple percentage points in reaction to the news.

Trump’s tariffs will have an even more significant effect on Europe, which Goldman warned could enter a “technical” recession by the end of the year, with “little” growth—as in, 0.0 percent growth in the third quarter.

“We estimate that our new tariff assumptions will lower euro area real GDP by an additional 0.25 percent compared to our previous baseline, for a total hit to the level of GDP of 0.7 percent compared to a no-tariff counterfactual by end-2026,” Goldman wrote in another note issued Sunday.

Trump, however, seemed completely unconcerned by the looming economic peril. Speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump brushed off concerns about high unemployment and “stagflation,” which is when economic growth stagnates but inflation remains high. Instead, he insisted that “this country is going to be more successful than it ever was.”

“It’s going to boom,” the president said. “We’re gonna have boomtown USA. We’re gonna boom.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio may have just violated a court order stopping the Trump administration’s fast-tracked deportations.

Rubio announced that a group of alleged gang members had been deported Sunday night.

“Last night, in a successful counter-terrorism operation with our allies in El Salvador, the United States military transferred a group of 17 violent criminals from the Tren de Aragua and MS-13 organizations, including murderers and rapists,” Rubio wrote on X Monday morning. He noted that both TdA and MS-13 were considered foreign terrorist organizations, which implies that they could be subject to removal under the Alien Enemies Act, or AEA.

Rubio thanked the Salvadoran government and President Nayib Bukele for “their unparalleled partnership in making our countries safe against transnational crime and terrorism.”

Multiple judges have rebuked Donald Trump’s use of the AEA and filed injunctions against his administration—and Rubio’s latest deportations may have just violated one.

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy issued a temporary restraining order requiring the government to provide written notice and an opportunity for detainees to apply for protection before deporting them to a third country.

It seems that with this latest round of deportations, the Trump administration has violated that court order, and continued to fast-track its removal of alleged gang members.

Earlier this month, Trump invoked the AEA, a wartime law that suspends due process. Under the act, the Trump administration swiftly deported 261 Venezuelan nationals to Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, the prison in El Salvador that is notorious for human rights abuses. The U.S. government claimed that everyone deported was a terrorist.

The deportees were removed without notifying their family members or lawyers, and they were not provided with the opportunity to challenge their deportation or their designation as gang members. In many cases, the government seems to have rounded up immigrants for supposedly suspicious tattoos that ended up having nothing to do with TdA at all.

In another filing last week, Judge James Boasberg wrote that by sending the prisoners to CECOT, the Trump administration had likely violated the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, which states that “it shall be the policy of the United States not to expel … any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” Boasberg wrote that at CECOT, prisoners are reportedly abused, humiliated, and left to rot without their families knowing anything about their whereabouts or well-being.

National security adviser Mike Waltz is grasping at straws to defend the fact that he invited The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal group chat about bombing Yemen.

During an interview on Fox News last week, Waltz attempted to explain away the enormous bluster by claiming that the editor’s number had simply been “sucked in” to his phone.

“I’m sure everybody out there has had a contact where you, it was, it said one person, and then a different phone number,” Waltz told the network.

“But you never talked to him before, so how is the number on your phone?” pressed Fox’s Laura Ingraham.

“Well, if you have somebody else’s contact, and then somehow it gets sucked in. It gets sucked in,” Waltz said.

That response—which comes from an individual who is supposed to be the pinnacle of American expertise on national security matters—completely misunderstands how cell phones work. Lest it need explanation, cell phones do not “suck in” phone numbers; instead, numbers are inserted by the people who use the device.

“This isn’t The Matrix,” Goldberg told NBC News Sunday, responding to Waltz’s comments. “Phone numbers don’t just get sucked into other phones. I don’t know what he’s talking about there.

“My phone number was in his phone because my phone number is in his phone,” Goldberg continued. “He’s telling everyone that he’s never met me or spoken to me. That’s simply not true.”

Democratic Representative Sean Casten was a little more blunt, branding Waltz as “full of shit.”

“If what he says is true, then he is choosing to discuss classified information on a platform where—in his own telling—he has no control over who is listening in,” Casten tweeted Sunday afternoon, reposting a clip of Goldberg’s interview. “Either he’s a liar or a traitor. Pick one.”

Waltz was the singular admin for a group chat created earlier this month on the retail app Signal in which over a dozen senior Trump administration officials discussed seemingly classified information regarding an imminent attack on Yemen. To make matters worse, Waltz blindly added Goldberg, who reported on the exchange last week. Donald Trump has continued to back Waltz publicly, but in private, the president was reportedly “mad” and “suspicious” that Waltz had Greenberg’s contact in his phone to begin with.

Former intelligence officials have warned that America’s adversaries “undoubtedly” already have the chat records, largely thanks to the Trump administration’s special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff’s physical presence in Russia when he was added to the chat.

In an interview with MeidasTouch Tuesday, former national security adviser Susan Rice said that Witkoff’s use of Signal while in Russia basically hand-delivered news of the attack to the Kremlin hours before it took place.

“Russians have whatever Witkoff was doing or saying on his personal cell phone,” Rice told the podcast.

The Signal fiasco also angered U.S. military pilots, who claimed that such a careless leak had blatantly put the lives of service members at risk. Dozens of interviewed Navy and Air Force pilots told The New York Times that the Trump administration’s operational security blunder had not only upended decades of military doctrine but had also shattered pilots’ trust that the Pentagon would prioritize their safety.

“The whole point about aviation safety is that you have to have the humility to understand that you are imperfect, because everybody screws up. Everybody makes mistakes,” Lieutenant John Gadzinski, a retired Navy F-14 pilot who flew combat missions from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, told the Times. “But ultimately, if you can’t admit when you’re wrong, you’re going to kill somebody because your ego is too big.”

President Trump continues to pivot endlessly on tariffs, badly destabilizing the very market he claims he’s trying to balance.

“On the tariffs that you’re planning … you’re expected to hit something like 10 to 15 countries, is that right?” a reporter asked Trump on Sunday, referring to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s description of the countries with the largest trade deficits with the U.S. as the “Dirty 15.”

“I don’t know who told you 10 or 15 countries,” Trump replied.

“Well we heard that.”

“But you didn’t hear it from me.”

“How many countries will be in that initial chunk?” the reporter pressed.

“You start with all countries, so let’s see what happens,” Trump said, dramatically expanding his threat.

“There are many countries.… If you look at the history, and you look at what’s happened to us.… Go to Asia, and you take a look at every single country in Asia, what they’ve done to the United States in trade,” Trump continued vaguely. “I wouldn’t say anybody has treated us fair, or nicely.”

Trump plans to drop these reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday, which he is framing as “Liberation Day.” But this spiteful trade war will only hurt American consumers and manufacturers already dealing with inflation, potentially leading the country into a recession. But Trump has already admitted he doesn’t care.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has revealed that the prerequisites for deporting Venezuelan migrants to Nayib Bukele’s Salvadoran mega-prison are extremely arbitrary. 

Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union on Sunday showed that the tattoos ICE is using to identify these men as Tren de Aragua gang members are images like the Jordan “Jumpman” logo, a crown, a train, and a clock, among other things. 

“All it takes to be sent to rot in prison in El Salvador is 1) having a tattoo an ICE officer says is a ‘gang tattoo’ and 2) displaying ‘logos,’ ‘symbols,’ or clothes an ICE officer says are gang signs,” American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote on X. “In order for ICE to declare someone an ‘Alien Enemy,’ ICE must first determine they are a Venezuelan over age 14, and then second find 8 points on a scoring guide they made up… This checklist is shocking. A person can be declared an ‘Alien Enemy’ based ONLY on communications with someone ICE says is a member, and nothing more.”

These flimsy requirements have already led to multiple innocent men being detained and deported. Frengel Reyes Mota, who was awaiting an asylum appointment and had no criminal record in Venezuela or the U.S., was snatched up over multiple administrative errors in his file. And last Tuesday Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, openly bragged that ICE had been picking up multiple innocent migrants in their raids, calling them “collateral arrests.”

These phony deportations have become a defining action of the early days of the second Trump administration, reinforcing the contempt and disregard that they hold for the basic tenets of our legal system, such as due process.