WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s trade war against all comers is likely already bringing on a recession, and his threat Thursday to fire the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is only making a bad situation worse, economists warned.

“It would be a ‘lunatics in charge of the asylum’ moment,” said Justin Wolfers, an economics professor at the University of Michigan, who predicted a shock to the system as big or even bigger than its reaction to Trump’s massive new tariffs. “Bond yields will rise probably as much as they did last week: 25-50 basis points. The dollar would fall. Stocks down 6%.”

Jason Furman, once the top economic adviser in Barack Obama’s White House and now a Harvard economics professor, pointed out that markets reacted when Trump merely alluded to firing Powell in 2019, during his first term — barely a year after he had appointed him to the job — for not lowering interest rates as quickly as Trump wanted.

“Would be a huge, huge blow to markets if Trump tries to fire Powell,” Furman said. “In the first term you saw meaningful movements down and up even on hints of the possibility.”

White House aides did not respond to HuffPost queries. Trump himself raised the idea of firing Powell in a Thursday morning social media post attacking him for not lowering interest rates, even as his counterparts at the European Central Bank have done so.

“The ECB is expected to cut interest rates for the 7th time, and yet, ‘Too Late’ Jerome Powell of the Fed, who is always TOO LATE AND WRONG, yesterday issued a report which was another, and typical, complete ‘mess!’ Oil prices are down, groceries (even eggs!) are down, and the USA is getting RICH ON TARIFFS. Too Late should have lowered Interest Rates, like the ECB, long ago, but he should certainly lower them now. Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!” Trump wrote, lying about grocery and egg prices being “down.”

Powell spoke at length on Wednesday about the uncertainty in the global and U.S. economies caused by the new tariffs, which levy a 10% import tax on most foreign goods, 25% on cars, aluminum and steel, and 145% on goods from China.

“These are fundamental changes in long-held policies in the U.S. There is not any real experience. Previous tariffs were not that strong and they were 95 years ago,” he said in remarks and a question-and-answer session at the Economic Club of Chicago.

Powell even referenced the 1986 movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” in which a high school history teacher famously explains that the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs, rather than helping, instead plunged the economy into the Great Depression.

Trump appointed Powell, a mainstream conservative economist, as Fed chair in 2017, and he began his four-year term in 2018. Democratic President Joe Biden renominated him in 2022, meaning Powell should remain in office another year and is, by law, immune from political interference. Trump, however, during his second term has not been bothered by laws and has repeatedly violated them in an attempt to grab new powers.

Mike Davis, a former Senate lawyer whose advocacy of dictator-like presidential authorities has won Trump’s ear, said Trump surely has the right to fire Powell. “If the president does not have the authority to fire the Fed chairman, the office is unconstitutional,” he said.

An attempt by Trump to fire Powell may eventually be blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court, which Furman said seemed to be hinting that the Fed, indeed, is independent of the president in a ruling last year. But, he added, anything the justices might do would take time to play out, with the economy cratering in the meantime.

“But who knows what they would do. And regardless, it is not like it would be resolved instantly,” Furman said.