(The Economic Collapse Blog)—Is it just a coincidence that a large number of talking heads in the corporate media have all suddenly decided to start blaming Donald Trump for causing a “recession”? During the four years of the Biden administration those same voices insisted that there was no “recession” on the horizon even though homelessness was setting record high after record high, demand at food banks surged to levels never seen before, inflation was out of control, home sales plunged to extremely depressed levels, stores and restaurants were closing all over the nation and debt levels were breaking records. Let’s be real. The U.S. economy has been on a downward trajectory for a long time, and that downward trajectory got even steeper in the final stages of the Biden administration. But now we are being told that the economic problems that we are experiencing are happening because Donald Trump is “manufacturing” a recession…
CNBC host Jim Cramer went off on President Donald Trump for fueling recession fears and cratering the stock market, noting competitor markets are “crushing us” and accusing Trump of potentially “manufacturing” a recession — or worse.
Really?
Trump has been in office less than 60 days. He simply has not had much of an opportunity to have much of an impact on the economy yet.
But following more than 1,400 days of Joe Biden, U.S. households were absolutely drowning in debt. In fact, we just learned that the average credit card debt load during the fourth quarter of last year was the highest that we have seen since the Great Recession…
For one, Americans’ inflation-adjusted debt burdens are starting to grow further beyond prepandemic 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.
Donald Trump was not president during the fourth quarter of 2024.
Joe Biden was.
We also just learned that missed payments on auto loans were at “the highest level in three decades” in January…
Missed payments on auto loans by American car owners rose to the highest level in three decades earlier this year.
The percentage of borrowers with subprime car loans who are at least 60 days past due on their loans increased to 6.56% in January, which was the highest level since data collection began in 1994, according to Fitch Ratings.
The share of 60 days past due subprime auto loan borrowers has remained above 6% since August 2024 after breaking the 6% threshold for the first time early last year. It previously approached the 6% mark in 1996, 2019 and 2023.
Donald Trump did not become president until January 20th. So don’t try to put that on Trump.
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During the final stages of the Biden administration, even many Americans that earn at least $150,000 per year were falling behind on their debts…
From January 2023 to January 2025, the rate at which people earning $150,000 or more a year are 60-to-89 days behind on their overall debts has more than doubled, according to CreditGauge, which is produced by VantageScore, an independent joint venture of the three major credit bureaus.
Should we be concerned about where the economy is heading?
Yes! But trying to blame Donald Trump for four years of failed policies just doesn’t make any sense.
It isn’t Trump’s fault that airlines are “cutting their first-quarter profit and sales estimates”…
Airlines are cutting their first-quarter profit and sales estimates, warning that a weaker economic backdrop is weighing on travel demand.
Ahead of a JPMorgan industry conference, American Airlines on Tuesday said it expects to lose between 60 cents a share and 80 cents a share in the first three months of the year, a wider loss than the 20 cents to 40 cents a share it previously forecast.
And it isn’t Trump’s fault that retail sales have been falling all over the nation. For example, Kohl’s is projecting “a sales decline between 5 percent to 7 percent”…
Kohl’s, the Wisconsin-based store with over 1,100 locations, has lowered its sales expectations for 2025, citing shifting consumer spending patterns.
In its latest forecast, the retailer revised expectations to a sales decline between 5 percent to 7 percent.
The news sent the company’s stock plummeting by over 26 percent on Tuesday.
For months, I have been documenting the enormous economic mess that we are facing.
Now that President Trump is in the White House, he is going to have an opportunity to try to fix things.
But it won’t be easy.
At this point, the NFIB’s uncertainty index has risen to the second highest level ever…
The National Federation of Independent Business reported that its small-business optimism index fell 2.1 points in February to a reading of 100.7.
The NFIB’s uncertainty index rose 4 points to 104, the second-highest reading ever, which in its current monthly form dates back to 1986.
If the U.S. economy is able to avoid a major recession, it will be an all-time economic miracle.
During a recent interview with Maria Bartiromo, President Trump openly acknowledged that we are facing “a period of transition”…
So far, the president appears to be trying to lower expectations. In an interview that aired Sunday on Fox News, Mr. Trump demurred when asked by Maria Bartiromo if he expected a recession this year.
“I hate to predict things like that,” he said. “There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing. And there are always periods of, it takes a little time. It takes a little time, but I think it should be great for us.”
If anyone thinks that it is all going to be smooth sailing ahead, they are just being delusional.
Of course the decisions that President Trump is making now will have an impact on the economy moving forward, and I have to admit that I am not keen on the trade wars that have erupted. On Tuesday, President Trump doubled tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada…
U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday ramped up a burgeoning trade war with Canada, saying he will double tariffs set to take effect within hours on all imported steel and aluminum products from Canada to 50%, amplifying a focus on tariff increases that has sent financial markets reeling and business leaders ringing alarm bells about weakening consumer demand.
Trump’s latest salvo was in response to the premier of Ontario’s announcement that he would place a 25% surcharge on the electricity Canada’s most populous province supplies to 1.5 million U.S. homes unless Trump drops all of his tariff threats against the northern U.S. neighbor.
If we try to fight trade wars with Canada, Mexico, China and the EU simultaneously, that is going to create an enormous amount of economic pain.
So hopefully our trade disputes will be settled quickly.
If not, those at the low end of the economic spectrum will be hit the hardest…
With views of current finances among the poorest Americans already near the lowest in 14 years, tariffs are set to add more pressure by making many everyday items even pricier.
Low-income households, who spend a larger share of their budgets on goods than the wealthy and tend to favor cheaper imports, will bear the brunt of the hit. Economists from Bank of America and BNP Paribas expect the February consumer price index report due Wednesday to show early signs of the impact from tariffs — in particular the additional levies on items like furnishings, clothes and electronics coming from China.
The economic problems that we are currently witnessing all over the world are just one element of “the perfect storm” that we are now experiencing.
Hopefully President Trump and his team will make wise decisions during the days ahead.
And it would greatly help if the Federal Reserve would lower interest rates.
Unfortunately, a very serious economic downturn has already begun, and there are many voices that are absolutely determined to blame whatever happens next on Donald Trump.
Michael’s blockbuster entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.