Trump accuses media of crashing the economy to ruin his presidency amid recession concerns
Donald Trump has once again lashed out at the media, but this time to blame reporters for trying to tank the US economy in a conspiracy to deny him a second term in the White House.
The president’s attack comes after Mr Trump delayed imposing some further tariffs on China as the two countries engage in an ongoing trade war, and as some economists have warned of a looming recession that could drag down the president’s re-election prospects.
“The Fake News Media is doing everything they can to crash the economy because they think that will be bad for me and my re-election,” Mr Trump said.
He continued: “The problem they have is that the economy is way too strong and we will soon be winning big on Trade, and everyone knows that, including China!”
The decision to hold back on further tariffs on Chinese goods was made at least in part to shield US consumers from the impact of higher costs, just as consumers head to stores at the beginning of the busy holiday shopping season.
That’s at least how commerce secretary Wilbur Ross explained the decision during an appearance on CNBC.
“Nobody wants to take any chance of disrupting the Christmas season,” he said.
Analysts, however, have said that the decision reflects the increasingly arbitrary nature of the dispute that Mr Trump has made a key facet of his foreign policy doctrine.
“The US-China tariff has reached a stalemate, or even more accurately, fallen into purgatory,” Scott Kennedy, an adviser at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, told Business Insider.
He continued: “The two sides are now locked in a conversation of increasing irrelevance, on individual tariff lines and goods purchased.”
Analysts on Wall Street are also closely watching signs that another recession may be coming in the US market, with a closely watched spot on the yield curve being inverted.
Every time the yield curve has inverted in the past 50 years, the US economy has gone into recession. But the lag time can take as long as 24 months before a recession is fully felt.
