America Voted For Chaos. The Markets Are Feeling the Punch.

Donald Trump's rapid-fire policy moves - and I'll note that the word "policy" is applied charitably in this case - are the economic equivalent of liberally tossing around lighter fluid and playing with a packet of matches.

His unnecessary, belligerent, and pointlessly aggressive tariffs, and his spending cuts (in the name of tax breaks for America's wealthy) have given his second term the fiscal aerodynamics of a lead balloon.

There's a difference between uncertainty and volatility, but Trump has lumbered into power with both at his heels, and America's economy is already feeling the one-two-punch.

The market reaction has been far from partisan. The S%P 500 is down 1.71%, the Nasdaq 2.20%. And the price of eggs, a marker that became the campaign-defining meme of Trump's financial promises, has soared; as of February 21, 2025, the national average wholesale price for a dozen Grade A eggs reached $8.07, the highest on record.

Trump's model of Governance through Executive Order has already pushed through a tsunami of ill-conceived changes to the American order and its institutions, from the petulant to the ideological. His tariffs - a blunt instrument favored by the economically illiterate - have targeted cars, semiconductors, and pharmaceuticals. Even Jim Farley, the Trump-supporting CEO of Ford, predicted the administration's approach would lead to "a lot of costs, a lot of chaos."

Meanwhile, Trump's co-president, Elon "Ketamine" Musk, has been let loose at the conjured-from-thin-air Department of Government Efficiency, where his cuts, irresponsible and incompetent at best, wilfully destructive at worse, have kicked off the wholesale collapse of employment across government departments and related industries; a ruin that will inevitably show up in stalled employment numbers.

The supply-chain ripple effect of Musk and Trump's effective shuttering of USAID is preemptively hitting agriculture and manufacturing. And markets are pricing in a gloomy assessment of policy disruption.

PMI has dropped to a 17-month low. Manufacturing is "front-running" tariffs as the reality of Trump's scorched earth economics sets in. The services area, both public and private, is already contracting. As it turns out, the "Trump Business Honeymoon" couldn't make it 30 days into his ignominious, post-conviction Presidency.

Consumer sentiment has followed Industry, falling to a 15-month low, with inflation expectations at their highest since 1995. And as Walmart has warned, the feedback loop between sentiment and spending couldn't be clearer. Americans are feeling the pinch, and their wallets are snapping shut.

None of this should be surprising to anyone with a functioning brain cell - so it's entirely understandable that it's left MAGA voters and Trump supporters gasping. Shooting from the hip is a poor approach to policy, and when uncertainty becomes an official strategy, the markets will fluctuate between erratic attempts at adaptation and paralysis. As euphoric as America's Oligarchs might have been about unchecked capitalism, the wholesale of regulation, and a Government that would either look the other way or lend a helping hand to their banditry, the fact is that markets thrive on stability. You cannot build on an unsteady foundation; right now, America's economic foundation is being undermined.

Disruption can be a positive force. But over the last decade, it has become a hand-wave that forgives and excuses irresponsible governance, poor decision-making, and financial incompetence. The reason you can't run the government like a startup is simple: 90% or more of startups fail. That's a risk threshold that should be unacceptable to anyone serious about the responsibility of America's stewardship.

Productive disruption in the context of an economy or a nation is possible. But there is no evidence of anything productive in Donald Trump's current approach to economics. Just more deliberate and collateral damage, more flagrant disregard for common sense, and more policies designed to shake things up while shaking the monetary baby to death.

The numbers surrounding Biden's soft landing, the numbers inherited by Trump and his gangsters, showed a nation bouncing back.

But Trump's performance in the first month of his second term is a strong signal that the soft landing is over, and America's fiscal outlook is grim to say the least.