The typical suspects in the leftist media ether have been spitting out Armageddon-level economic scareporn about President Donald Trump’s trade war like clockwork. But Axios is now admitting that may have all been just pathetic attempts to get people to jump at shadows that aren’t attached to anything.
“Hard data suggests tariff-driven inflation and recession fears may be overblown,” read the eye-opening May 15 headline by Axios economics reporter Courtney Brown. “With major indicators from April — the month of peak tariff uncertainty — now in, none show the kinds of recessionary or inflationary conditions implied by business and consumer surveys,” Brown reported.
Go figure.
Brown based her analysis on recent data on retail prices being “steady” and a “surprise drop” in whole price inflation in April. “So far, so good,” concluded Brown. The Labor Department released its report on producer prices showing a massive 0.5 percent drop against economists’ expectations of a 0.3 percent increase.
The Daily Wire noted that the producer price drop “marks the first time the Producer Price Index declined since October 2023.” In Brown’s estimation, the producer price figures “showed little sign of tariff-related price pressures that businesses have warned about.”
Of course, Brown couldn’t let it all be good news and elevated the doomism of Walmart CFO John David Rainey who predicted the subdued tariff effects on prices wouldn’t last. But, as ING chief international economist James Knightley told Brown, “There is little evidence, so far, that tariffs are inflationary and instead profit margins are being squeezed.”
All in all, the Axios report flies in the face of media hacks like CNN Business executive editor David Goldman who was floating the absurd notion of a “Great Depression” in the stock market as recently as April. When the consumer prices report came in on Tuesday showing that egg prices had indeed tumbled 12.4 percent in line with Trump’s predictions, Goldman still had the temerity to write a spin-job story that reeked of oxymoronic reasoning: “Trump’s egg price fiction has suddenly become reality.” Yes, that headline actually exists on the CNN website.
To be clear, no one knows what the end result of Trump’s trade war will be. But recent data — as Axios concluded — is at the least an indictment on a media sphere that was clearly hellbent on jump-starting nervous breakdowns in the economy before Trump even had a chance to sit down in the Oval Office in January.
