Economy

With the 2026 midterms less than six months away and President Donald Trump suffering from persistently low approval ratings in countless polls, some GOP lawmakers have a warning for members of their party: voters are angry. A CNN/SSRS poll released on May 12 found that only 30 percent of Americans approve of Trump's handling of the economy — and almost 70 percent fear the United States will go into a recession in the next year.

According to Politico reporters Jordain Carney and Meredith Lee Hill, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) and other GOP lawmakers are urging fellow lawmakers to be more proactive about the economy — especially inflation.

"Americans are furious about the rising cost of living, and a series of internal battles on Capitol Hill this week is laying bare why Republicans are struggling to do anything about it," Carney and Hill report. "House and Senate Republicans are facing divisions over a gas-tax holiday being demanded by President Donald Trump, not to mention housing and energy permitting bills that have stalled for months…. The scale of the political challenges facing Republicans were further underscored Tuesday with the administration's latest cost estimate for the Iran war surpassing $29 billion and a brutal inflation report showing gas, grocery and housing prices surging last month amid the conflict."

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told Politico that the look is "not good" when Trump continues to push for a lavish White House ballroom while Americans are struggling with high gas prices.

Hawley told Politico, "I don't know that the Congress is doing a whole lot — that's the real issue. My advice to Congress would be, it might be good for us to do something on cost of living.… It seems like voters are making it very clear that they want some relief."

Trump is calling for a gas tax holiday, but Sens. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) and Jim Justice (R-Virginia) aren't impressed.

Justice likened the proposal to "taking aspirin for cancer," and Paul told Politico, "I think instead of suspending the tax, we should suspend the war."

In October 2025, Bloomberg News reported that Chinese President Xi Jinping and other Chinese government officials were offering to invest $1 trillion in the United States in exchange for getting a break on tariffs. But according to The Hill's Sophie Brams, a growing number of MAGA Republicans are voicing their opposition to the proposed deal.

One of them is former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia).

In a May 11 post on X, formerly Twitter, Taylor posted, "The war in Iran must be going worse than we know as the Strait remains closed. So much so that China may be allowed to build $1 Trillion in factories in the U.S. probably in exchange for help with Iran. I’m old enough to remember when MAGA was demanding China not be allowed to own any land in America. But MAGA is whatever Trump says it is, according to him, so now it’s for foreign wars and China. Shocking."

Fox News' Laura Ingraham, reporting on the deal, posted "!!" And another right-wing media figure, radio and host and former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, posted, "omg."

Conservative columnist Gordon G. Chang is vehemently opposed to the proposed $1 trillion deal.

On X, Chang wrote, "China's regime will use investments in America to subvert and destroy our country. Do not allow our enemy more bases of subversion here."

Steve Johnson, a self-described "America First/MAGA conservative," tweeted, "China is our number 1 enemy and it's not even close. It's crazy after what they did in 2020 and have been doing, that we continue relationships with them. I would label them a terrorist country if I was President. They have killed hundreds of thousands of Americans using cartels bringing in fentanyl and bring over viruses into our Country. They have Chinese national spy's in our Universities and have setup illegal bio labs as well, etc… F–– China."

The Wall Street Journal's Joseph C. Sternberg, in a recent op-ed, posed the question: "What happens when Europeans find out how poor they are?" Sternberg argued that the "widening gap between American and European prosperity" was showing itself with "gross domestic product."

But liberal economist Paul Krugman disagrees with the premise of Sternberg's op-ed in a Substack column, stressing that "European incomes relative to American incomes have not declined, because GDP growth as conventionally measured doesn't mean what many people think it means." And he poses a question of his own: "What happens when Americans realize how miserable we are?"

Krugman acknowledges that Americans are not miserable "in all respects."

"But my guess is that relatively few Americans realize how much we are falling behind other nations on basic aspects of a civilized life, like health and safety," the former New York Times columnist explains. "Take the issue of life expectancy, which surely matters as much as GDP. After all, one important contributor to the quality of life is not being dead. Judging from reader reactions to earlier posts, many generally well-informed Americans are still startled to learn how badly U.S. life expectancy has lagged behind other advanced nations. ... This life expectancy gap will surely grow in the years ahead, thanks to the Trump Administration's attacks on both health coverage and modern medicine, including but not limited to the widening assault on vaccines. ... Or consider infant mortality, where the United States not only does much worse than other rich nations but now does worse than some much poorer countries."

Krugman points out that "murder rates are still far higher in the U.S. than in Europe" — for example, 5.8 homicides per 100 people compared to only 1.3 in France, 1.1 in the UK, and 0.6 in Italy.

"Mortality is a useful point of comparison because it's easily quantifiable," Krugman notes. "So, to a lesser extent, is work-life balance. ... The average U.S. private-sector worker receives only 10 days of paid vacation and 6 paid holidays annually. And the U.S. is, of course, the only advanced nation that doesn't guarantee healthcare to all its citizens. Other problems with the U.S. way of life — like our lack of walkable cities, access to public transportation, and feasibility of living without a car — are harder to summarize with simple numbers. But they are real failings. ... And many Americans would, I believe, be angry if they realized how much worse our lives are in many ways than those of our counterparts abroad."

President Donald Trump, in speech after speech, insists that the U.S. economy has never been better. Yet numerous polls are showing widespread dissatisfaction with his second presidency. And according to CNN, Americans are in a relentlessly "sour mood" that is showing no signs of improving.

Five CNN reporters — Jennifer Agiesta, Annette Choi, Ariel Edwards-Levy, Edward Wu, and David Goldman — find that much of the country's widespread pessimism is connected to the economy, especially inflation.

"Those negative feelings about the economy, with major political implications for the midterms, reflect the strain across economic, generational and partisan lines on Americans' everyday lives," they explain. "Many people are trimming their grocery lists and cutting back spending on extras, and few feel comfortably able to save."

A new CNN/SSRS poll finds that almost 70 percent of Americans fear a recession is likely in the next year.

"Middle-income and lower-income Americans' wages stopped outpacing inflation last year, according to Bank of America," the CNN journalists report. "That's left many Americans in a sour mood about their financial prospects. The public has held a negative view of the economy for five straight years in CNN's polling. There's a near-universal sense that the current economic moment is a better time to save than to spend on major purchases: Eighty-eight percent feel that way, including more than 8 in 10 across income brackets…. Americans from all backgrounds name cost of living as their primary financial concern in an open-ended question."

A Georgia Republican in his twenties laments that home ownership is a steep uphill climb for Generation Z, telling CNN, "I don't know how anyone from my generation will ever do anything except rent."

An Arkansas-based Democrat in his thirties described his situation as "two full-time jobs and can barely cover bills, let alone even think about getting ahead."

In 2022, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Republicans attacked then-President Joe Biden relentlessly over gas prices. Biden was a vehement critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and many Republicans blamed his foreign policy when gas prices went up.

But two and one-half months into his war against Iran, President Donald Trump is arguing that higher gas prices are a small price to pay for preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapon. And according to NOTUS reporters Daniella Diaz and Al Weaver, many other Republicans avoiding the subject of gas prices altogether.

"Gas prices have surged nearly 50 percent amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran," Diaz and Weaver report. "The response from congressional Republicans has been a study in spin. Some Republicans pivoted to argue this wasn't as high as under the previous administration."

The NOTUS reporters note that in a 2024 campaign ad attacking Biden, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-New York) complained that "the cost of everything has gone through the roof." But now, Lawler is saying that higher gas prices resulting from Trump's Iran war are "absolutely worth it."

"Not all Republicans have been so vocal in their reversal, with some just simply going silent," Diaz and Weaver observe. "Rep. Juan Ciscomani, who ran ads warning that 'food, gas, medicine, it all costs more,' in 2024, has said essentially nothing about gas prices since the war began. Rep. María Elvira Salazar, who held up an egg on camera and told voters in 2024 she felt the weight of rising gasoline and grocery costs, blamed Biden for gas prices in an X post in February, weeks before the current spike made that framing harder to sustain."

The NOTUS journalists add, "Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and David Valadao, both of whom ran promising 'lower gas prices' messaging in 2024, have offered little detail on the issue since."

A GOP operative, interviewed on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that higher gas prices are a problem for Republicans in the 2026 midterms.

The operative told NOTUS, "It affects our voters more than their voters. We live farther apart from each other.… You hope and pray it's temporary. I can't, with a straight face, come up with anything better."

During a time of widespread angst over the economy, National Economic Council (NEC) Director Kevin Hassett appeared on CNBC's "Squawk Box" and aggressively defended President Donald Trump's record on inflation.

When told that inflation has increased, not decreased, since former President Joe Biden left office, Hassett argued, "The bottom line is inflation is going down at the microeconomic level by a million things that we've done, like fix the avian flu so egg prices are down, change beef imports so that beef prices go down, make drug prices more affordable with TrumpRX…. But at the macroeconomic level right now, the driving force right now is the temporary increase in the price of gas."

Hassett also said, "President Trump is taking every problem on earth and gone 100 percent at fixing it."

Hassett's claim that Trump is causing prices to plummet in countless way is drawing a lot of responses on X, some of them downright scathing.

Journalist John Harwood tweeted, "Kevin will say anything."

In a separate tweet, Harwood sarcastically posted, "yes of course, Trump is fixing every problem on earth."

Journalist Logan McMillen, known for his work for The New Republic, Jacobin and others, posted, "Okay sure, and remind me how we get all of those other things you just listed to consumers."

Marketing consultant Jeffery A. Thomas wrote, "In the menagerie of sycophantic idiots that comprise the current Trump Cabinet Kevin Hassett's obsequiousness stands alone."

Retired immunology professor Jim Hagan argued, "Does the administration understand that almost no one believes a word that Hassett says?"

X user Jennifer Roberts commented, "Do you think there will ever be a day when Kevin Hassett will wake up and think, 'Hey, maybe I WON'T go be a smug, obsequious toadie on TV today?'"

Another X user, Chris Kennedy, said of Hassett, "He's the Baghdad Bob of the economy. 'Everything is great! Trump solved the Avian Flu by himself! Beef prices are going down!' Why does CNBC continue to put him, Bessent, or [Howard] Lutnick on when all they do is lie?"

The economy looks "bleak," as Americans spend down their savings — to the lowest rate in years, according to Axios. Lower-earning Americans are the hardest hit, and are increasingly strapped for cash.

"They're literally running out of money at the end of the month," Kraft Heinz CEO Steve Cahillane told Bloomberg last week. "We're seeing negative cash flows in the lower-income brackets where they're dipping into savings."

Some CEOs have "warned that their customers are struggling to deal with rising gas prices and higher inflation."

Indeed, lower-earning households opted to buy 7 percent less gas in March as prices skyrocketed, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. "They likely took public transit a bit more and tried to carpool, Axios reported.

But even higher-earning Americans cut back on buying gas, although only "modestly."

McDonald's CEO Christopher Kempczinski is warning that higher gas prices are hitting lower-income Americans hardest.

The price of gas has increased roughly 45 percent from when Trump was sworn in as president last year. The national average hit $4.52 per gallon on Monday, per AAA, up from $3.13 the week he was inaugurated.

Some lower-income earners appear to be holding on to their savings, but they're being strategic.

Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, said on Friday that "they seem to be bracing for higher prices to remain in place for a while," Axios noted.

"Inflation is wiping out wage gains," Long warned on Friday on social media. This is the big Achilles Heel in the US economy."

"Wages are being eaten up by inflation due to the war in Iran," she added. "This is a big shift from the past several years when wages were growing well above inflation. Yes, workers have jobs, but this is a squeeze."

Overall, Axios noted, "economic woes may be confined to just the lowest earners. Higher-income shoppers are still driving growth at both McDonald's and Walmart, the companies said."

As it stands now, higher-income earners are keeping "the overall picture looking good, while underneath the headline numbers, it looks bleak."

President Donald Trump has promoted his “Trump Accounts,” or stock market investment accounts for American children, as being great for future generations — but experts are not so sure.

“The federal government is less than two months away from opening Trump Accounts for private contributions on July 4, 2026, and a debate over what should go in them has begun,” wrote TheStreet's Damilola Esebame on Sunday. “White House and Treasury officials have discussed allowing wealthy donors to contribute shares of stock directly into the children's savings accounts, a shift that could reshape the program.”

Esebame pointed out that the accounts currently only accept cash and all of it gets invested in low-cost S&P 500 index funds where the expense ratios are capped at 0.1 percent. Yet there is talk about changing the rules regarding how these funds are managed, in particular allowing White House and Treasury officials to contribute shares of stock directly into the children's savings accounts.

“If the rules change, millions of children already enrolled may end up with a completely different type of account,” Esebame explained. “What you need to understand is how this fight over stock donations could affect the money designated for your child.”

Financial experts have come forward to raise the alarm about these changes.

"The whole point of the requirement for holding low-fee index funds is to avoid speculative investing in single stocks, and reversing that rule would encourage much more speculative risk-taking in accounts that are meant for steady accumulation of retirement savings," Ben Henry-Moreland, CFP, Senior Financial Planning Nerd at Kitces.com, recently told CNBC. Similarly Adam Michel, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute, recently observed that Trump Accounts carry more restrictions and fewer tax benefits than 529 plans and Roth IRAs, and that therefore the purpose of the accounts is to receive free money rather than deposit personal savings.

“The stock donation debate is unfolding against a broader wave of billionaire giving that has transformed these accounts beyond their original design,” Esebame reported.

Earlier this month, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) admitted as a “dirty little secret” that Trump accounts are really part of the Republican Party’s larger long-term plan to privatize Social Security.

“Conservatives in America, for 50 years ... have been trying to do Social Security personal accounts,” Cruz said, referring to President George W. Bush’s proposed policy to have citizens put money into stocks rather than funding Social Security. "Here's the dirty little secret: Trump accounts are Social Security personal accounts."

Cruz, described by many as the “chief architect” of the Trump accounts, added “How did we get it done this time? Because we gave the money to babies, and so the old people didn't get pissed. But you know what? Babies grow up.”

The Irish Star reports critics bushwhacked a White House social media post wherein it proclaimed to be an ally of small business when consumer satisfaction is historically low.

The mass attack came on the heels of a small business summit held at the White House, after which the White House posted on X, stating: "Small businesses are the backbone of America. They drive 40 percent of our economy, power American manufacturing and support working families nationwide.”

But hundreds of online critics swarmed the comments section to share their fury at President Donald Trump and the business environment he’s created for the small businesses he claims to appreciate.

“As a small business owner, you have made everything MUCH worse. You're the enemy of the United States and of the American people,” said one critic, according to the Star.

“Trump just gave small business the death sentence,” posted another. “With fuel doubled, family businesses will be going into bankruptcy from Trump's war of choice supporting a genocidal state.”

Even purported crypto advocates — long considered deep in Trump’s political corner — jumped in on the abuse: “Both my small business have taken a hit … no good health insurance for small business owners. All prices are up on all goods we use to make our products. Shipping is terrible since gas is going up. Quite the opposite and I voted for you 3 times … WTF is going on?”

“And they can’t afford gas because you felt it necessary to go to war with someone who couldn’t hold our jock strap,” howled another. “Where is my $2000 tariff check …?”

Another critic, presumably a Republican, complained that “If we lose the House and Senate, it will be because [Trump] turned his back on America First and put a foreign nation ahead of America. TRUMP turned on US ... not the other way around.”

The worlds of business and high finance have been huge backers of President Donald Trump and his political agenda throughout the years, but as one former Trump official claimed to Bloomberg, many of them now "regret" giving him their vote as his second term has put the economy in a "very vulnerable state."

Anthony Scaramucci emerged as one of the most memorable alumni of Trump's first administration, both for his big personality and his minuscule time on the job, being fired as White House press secretary after just 10 days and spawning a half-joking measure for all other Trump firings. Since that brief and tumultuous time, he has emerged as an outspoken critic of Trump, making numerous media appearances to shred his chaotic agenda, while also backing Democrats in the 2020 and 2024 elections.

On Friday, Bloomberg published a new interview with Scaramucci, digging into his thoughts on the state of the country under Trump's second term and the blue wave suspected to be approaching in the midterms. While he agreed with most predictions about the House flipping to the Democrats in a big way, he stopped short of making the same call for the Senate, given the states in play on this year's map.

Scaramucci confirmed that he remains a registered Republican, despite the damage he believes that Trump has done to the party. When asked why he does not spend more time finding a replacement for Trump at the head of the GOP instead of backing Democrats, he said that it comes down to the threat that the president poses, and added that his friends on Wall Street are regretting their support for him.

"Trump is too dangerous. It’s funny, all my Wall Street buddies voted for him and now they’re regretting the fact," Scaramucci said, clarifying that "most of people are," when pressed about whether it was "all" of them, or just some.

Digging further into the situation, Scaramucci highlighted the economic ruin that Trump has brought about in his second term, despite the fact that some on Wall Street are doing well for themselves in spite of things.

"I’m of the belief that prices are higher. We have an oil crisis. He imposed illegal tariffs, which raised the pricing umbrella for all the lower-middle-income people that voted for him," Scaramucci explained. "He’s put us in a very vulnerable state as a country and an economy. If you want to make the case that the banks have record profits in the short term, sure — but he’s also suing some of the banking executives. You are losing the predictive capability of our justice system — what our civil rights are, what our free speech rights are. It’s very, very bad for business."

Late last year, the White House announced that President Donald Trump would kick off 2026 by touring the nation to promote his economic agenda, with a focus on affordability. Instead, he launched a war attacking Iran — driving gas prices higher and pushing overall inflation up even further.

Now, with major campaign promises unfulfilled, and six months to go before the midterms, Trump’s economic agenda is collapsing.

He never lowered prices “on day one,” and Americans’ electric bills were not cut in half within his first six months. Six in ten Americans disapprove of his handling of the economy.

The price of gas has increased roughly 45 percent from when Trump was sworn in as president last year, but the White House is trying to spin that as a positive. The national average hit $4.55 per gallon on Thursday, per AAA, up from $3.13 the week he was inaugurated.

On Wednesday, Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House’s National Economic Council, declared that rising consumer spending — including on gasoline — proves the economy is thriving, even as Americans put those costs on their credit cards. Despite Hassett’s claims that Americans “have so much more money in their pockets,” late last month, Gallup reported that 55 percent of Americans say their finances are getting worse.

Trump’s in-office economic proposals have not fared any better.

“The biggest piece of housing legislation in a generation has languished on Capitol Hill because of lawmakers’ objections to a provision negotiated by the White House,” Bloomberg News reports. Trump has also abandoned a proposed 10 percent cap on credit card interest rates, following backlash from banks and skepticism from economists.

Bloomberg notes that “two executive orders, one aimed at easing access to mortgage credit and another that seeks to streamline regulations for builders, are not yet fully implemented and experts say they would only help marginally.”

A White House official told Bloomberg there are plans to try to bring down the price of some grocery store items, and said that the administration is negotiating with drug manufacturers to lower prices.

The administration also touted a “major housing announcement” related to new credit-score models for housing, but, Bloomberg notes, “those changes won’t translate to significant savings for consumers, according to Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the right-leaning American Action Forum.”

“The cost of credit scores as a part of the purchase price of the house is nothing,” he said.

The cost of buying a home has increased. By buying $200 million in mortgage bonds, the administration briefly brought mortgage rates down to below 6 percent, but Trump’s Iran war escalated those costs, and today the interest on a 30-year mortgage is 6.3%.

Trump last year floated 50-year mortgages as a means to lower interest rates, but that proposal also went nowhere.

With six months until Election Day, the Iran war still in focus and gas prices still rising, voters say Trump has yet to deliver.

President Donald Trump's unending crisis is turning into "the most potent job-killer in the country," according to a new analysis from The Hill, which still seemingly is not enough to prompt pushback from the "spineless MAGA gophers" in Congress who have the power to stop it.

Max Burns is a longtime Democratic strategist and frequent contributor to The Hill. In his latest piece from Thursday, he laid out the ways in which Trump's war with Iran is not just bankrupting troubled airlines, but the entire country as well, as personal debt soars and consumer confidence plummets.

"The economic uncertainty wrought by Trump’s war is now the most potent job-killer in the country," Burns explained. "Indeed, the Iran War may well be remembered for little else besides the rolling job losses and financial hardship it inflicted on working-class Americans who were already grappling with rising consumer prices.

He continued: "Bank of America reports that credit card spending has surged roughly 4.3 percent in March, the most in more than three years, as consumers pile on debt to pay for basic necessities like gasoline. Unsurprisingly, consumer confidence has collapsed to the lowest level ever recorded as most Americans prepare for the worst."

Beyond the pain inflicted on personal finances, Burns noted how extreme the cost of the war is becoming for taxpayers, at a time when the administration has also ruthlessly slashed life-saving services and funding. The total cost of the conflict has reportedly reached roughly $72 billion, with the Pentagon supposedly set to request $80-100 billion in further funding from Congress. This is all comes not long after healthcare subsidies were cut for 22 million Americans, sending their premiums through the roof.

So far, Burns continued, most of Trump's loyal Republican followers in Congress have opted not to push back, but these worsening circumstances might finally break the dam.

"At some point, enough has to be enough, even for the spineless MAGA gophers currently clogging up the Congress," Burns added. "It appears at least a few Republicans are beginning to realize how economically (and politically) disastrous Trump’s war is shaping up to be. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) recently pushed for a War Powers Act vote in the Senate in the Senate; her moment of courage was dampened by Republican leader John Thune flatly ignoring the request.

He continued: "That hasn’t stopped Murkowski from building support for the vote from Republicans including Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)(R-Mo.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), John Curtis (R-Utah) and Todd Young (R-Ind.)... How many times will Trump’s enablers allow themselves to look like fools in order to avoid acknowledging that this war is a rolling economic disaster? How many times will they force the American people to pay the cost of Trump’s ruinous impulses and erratic schemes?"

U.S. President Donald Trump's approval ratings, in numerous polls, were weak even before he went to war against Iran in late February. But the war is making him even more unpopular in polls. A Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll released in early May found Trump's overall approval at 37 percent, although his numbers were lower than that on inflation (27 percent), the cost of living (23 percent) and the economy (34 percent).

According to Wall Street journal reporters Brian Schwartz and Alison Sider, Trump's advisers are growing "increasingly worried" about his unpopularity and fear that Republicans will suffer for it in the 2026 midterms.

Schwartz and Sider, in an article published online on Wednesday night, May 6 and in WSJ's print edition the next day, report that former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, "sounded the alarm" about "high jet-fuel prices" during a recent meeting with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Sununu, who heads the airline industry group Airlines for America, warned that the economic impact of the Iran war could be a major political liability for Republicans.

"Administration officials have gotten the message," according to the WSJ reporters. "Privately, President Trump's advisers are increasingly worried that Republicans will pay a political price for the rising fuel costs, according to people familiar with the matter. Many of those advisers are eager to end the war in hopes that prices will begin moderating before November's midterm elections. The fallout from the U.S.-Israeli attack in late February has slowed traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane, triggering a sharp increase in oil, gasoline and jet-fuel prices. That means consumers are grappling with high costs ahead of the summer travel season, as they consider vacation plans."

According to a recent NPR/PBS/Marist poll, 63 percent of Americans blame Trump, to varying degrees, for higher gas prices.

"Jet-fuel prices roughly doubled in a matter of weeks after the war began, and they have remained high," Schwartz and Sider note. "Airlines have said that will add billions of dollars of additional expenses this year, squeezing profit margins…. Carriers have been raising ticket prices, hoping to pass the cost along to consumers, and they are culling flights that will no longer make money at higher price levels. In March, the price of a U.S. domestic round-trip economy ticket rose 21 percent from a year earlier to $570, according to Airlines Reporting Corp., which tracks travel-agency sales."

The Wall Street Journal and other industry observers keep saying artificial intelligence investment is the one thing “saving” President Donald Trump’s stock market time and again, as Trump’s economy plateaus or tanks other stocks. However, Asad Ramzanali, director of AI and technology policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, says AI overinvestment and risky financial engineering have made an AI crash more likely.

“I started [my research] not assuming we’re in a bubble, but that if we are, we should be prepared. As I got deeper into this, I became convinced that we are in a period of overinvestment where the money going out the door in the industry, which is primarily for data centers and chips, doesn’t match the money coming in,” Ramzanali told Washington Monthly podcast, Senior Editor Anne Kim.

Ramzanali said research shows “$2 trillion is what the annual revenue from AI will have to look like to recoup” all this investment — and that’s not what can happen in the real world. So, prep for the inevitable bust.

Companies that make data centers: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta and Oracle are making estimates in the 2026 capital expenditures that promise “higher percentage of GDP than the Manhattan Project, the expansion of electricity, the Apollo space program, the building of the interstate highway system, the broadband build out in the ‘90s, everything but the Louisiana Purchase. This nets out to about $700 billion of investment this year,” said Ramazanali.

In other words, curb your enthusiasm. But tech companies now make up one third of the stock market, and banks are invested in those tech companies in big ways like private credit, structured finance and endless pools of capital all funneling into similar investments.

“[W]hen you’re talking about something that is this large, this high of a magnitude of our whole economy, that’s where I start to get worried about the spillover effects into the rest of the economy,” said Ramzanali.

What this means for the Trump stock market — which is practically all Trump has left to brag about — is nothing good for Trump.

The New York Times reports Trumps largely steady stock market keeps assuming it “will always be saved” by the government and that markets are “not properly pricing risk, because they really don’t have to.”

“ … [But] the new rescuer investors are counting on — artificial intelligence — is vulnerable to the exact risks markets are ignoring,” reports the Times. “This has huge consequences. … This reliance on A.I. looks like an extraordinary concentration of bets” that the Times reports is “likely straining their cash cushions.”

Nobody will want to be president when the only stable stock buttressing Trump’s economy in a time of widely-fluctuating gas and grocery prices suddenly goes wobbly. And Trump has three more years for the wobble to hit him.

Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House’s National Economic Council, is boasting that rising consumer spending — including on gasoline — proves the economy is thriving, even as Americans put those costs on their credit cards.

“And so the consumer is really, really firing on all cylinders, just like the corporate sector you’re seeing in the earnings reports, and they’re doing that because they have so much more money in their pockets,” Hassett told Fox Business.

Bragging that “credit card spending is through the roof,” Hassett said, “They’re spending more on gasoline, but they’re spending more on everything else, too.”

The data shows a different story.

Polls show that the majority of Americans are worried about their finances, more now than at any time in decades.

Late last month, Gallup reported that 55 percent of Americans say their finances are getting worse.

“That percentage is the highest Gallup has recorded since it began asking Americans about their finances in 2001, showing consumers are less optimistic than they were during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and the Great Recession in 2008,” CBS News reported.

Since President Donald Trump was sworn into office in January 2025, Americans are paying roughly 45% more for gas — with the national average hitting $4.53 per gallon today, per AAA, up from $3.13 that week.

“Almost 3 in 10 Americans now have less savings than they did a year ago, and for many, the safety net they once relied on is already gone,” reports MoneyWise. “According to a recent DepositAccounts survey, 37% of Americans have less than $500 set aside, and nearly half (45%) wouldn’t be able to cover more than a month of essential expenses if their income stopped.”

President Donald Trump has led America into so much debt that it now exceeds the entirety of the nation’s gross domestic product, and one academic is warning that the bill is coming due.

“Unless we change course, the debt will only get worse—fast,” wrote Brookings Institution senior fellow William Galston for The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. “The Congressional Budget Office estimates that we are on track to accumulate more than $24 trillion in debt over the next decade, for a total of $56 trillion—120 percent of estimated GDP in 2036.”

He added, “These numbers are so large that it is hard to grasp what they mean. One key measure is the cost of financing this swelling debt burden. Twenty-five years ago, interest payments on the national debt were 2 percent of GDP. This year they will claim 3.3 percent; a decade from now, 4.6 percent.”

Galston broke down the numbers in terms of how they will impact ordinary Americans. By 2036, the US will increase its spending on debt interest from $1 trillion to $2.1 trillion, amounting to nearly one-fifth of the total federal budget. This means that, by that time, “more than 2 out of every 3 dollars we borrow will go to finance interest on the debt. The longer this continues, the worse it gets.”

Because President Clinton worked with both parties in Congress so that by 2001 the debt had fallen to just 32 percent of GDP, Galston argued that the current crisis is not unsolveable. He expressed support for a recent bipartisan plan by 14 representatives, half from each party, to "commit the country to reduce the budget deficit to 3 percent of GDP and maintain it at or below this level."

While backing this target, however, Galston also urged pragmatism.

“A serious effort to slow and then halt the growth of public debt would involve reductions in popular programs, increased revenue from taxes as well as economic growth, and devolution of some federal programs to the states,” Galston wrote. “Given how hard-pressed working- and middle-class households are these days, wealthy Americans would have to bear a substantial share of the burden.”

He added, “A political version of the Hippocratic oath—first, do no harm—would be a good place to start. If the Trump administration wants to increase defense spending by more than $400 billion in the next fiscal year, it should specify how this can be done without increasing the deficit. The same holds for Democrats who want to increase domestic spending above current levels. If Congress isn’t willing to accept the needed offsets, it shouldn’t increase spending.”

Galston concluded, “None of this will happen without a president who is prepared to persuade the people that getting the debt under control is a top priority.”

Galston is not alone among budget hawks who are alarmed at the rising debt.

“Biden ramped up spending, especially on his way out the door,” Reason's Nick Gillespie wrote last month. “Trump is doing more of the same. Yes, he's pushing to cut certain types of spending, but in the aggregate, it's just more and more red ink as far as the eye can see, a tendency that was true of him during his first term, both before and after the pandemic.”

Gillespie added, “In fact, federal spending under Trump increased $1,441 per person before COVID fully opened the spigot. Of the $7.8 trillion in new debt he signed off on in his first term, less than half was related to COVID relief. And by every indication—including his recent budget proposal, which calls for a record-high defense budget of $1.5 trillion—Trump aims to sign off on ever-increasing amounts of spending until his term expires in 2029.”