Justin Wolfers, a University of Michigan economics professor, offered a short but biting summary of President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policies on Wednesday, warning they could help trigger a recession.

“You and me, our family budgets and how we make plans depends entirely on what happens in the White House and it’s even harder than that because they haven’t announced a single clear coherent policy,” Wolfers pointed out to MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace.

He then summarised the chaos in just five seconds:

“We have tariffs, then we don’t. Then we’re on a pause. Then we’re not. Then we’re going to make deals. And actually, we’re not going to make deals — I’m just going to say a new number.”

Wolfers said that both families and businesses are “frozen in place,” unable to plan budgets or make purchasing decisions amid the uncertainty.

That paralysis, he warned, “potentially is the start of a recession.”

Earlier in the segment, Wolfers said the Trump administration had “totally messed up” with its trade policy, and suggested the best-case scenario now would be for Trump to back off from his tariffs.

He also noted that the U.S. now has tariff rates about 10 times higher than those of key trading partners, and cited a “funny fact” that “you have to be an economist to really geek out on” which is that the economic pain caused by tariffs increases exponentially with the rate.

“The pain that this set of tariffs is going to cause is going to be roughly 50 times larger than the tariffs that Trump imposed in his first term,” Wolfers warned.

“Realize that everything we buy is at risk,” he cautioned, especially everyday products at the grocery store that are either made in China — now subject to a 145% tariff — or use inputs from China.

“With the 145% tariff, it basically becomes impossible to buy any of those things,” he added.