Donald Trump has heard the seers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, and he's not buying their predictions of a looming recession.
The president dodged any talk of an economic downturn during a surprisingly testy interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday.
"There are rising worries about a slowdown," Bartiromo said plainly. "Look, I know that you've inherited a mess...but are you expecting a recession this year?"
"I hate to predict things like that," Trump 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. There are always periods of...it takes a little time, but I think it should be great for us."
The hardball question came after the Atlanta Fed predicted a contraction of the American economy in the first quarter of 2025. Their prediction of a nearly 3% dip in the United States' GDP came as Trump's on-again, off-again tariffs have injected uncertainty into trade between the U.S., Canada, Mexico and China.
To that end, Bartiromo pressed Trump for a straight answer on his long-threatened tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods. Trump said that the tariffs "may go up" before adding a conditional and disheartening "it depends."
"We may go up with some tariffs, it depends. I don't think we'll go down, but we may go up," Trump said. "Our country's been ripped off for many decades, for many, many decades, and we're not going to be ripped off anymore."
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about the coming recession