Growing numbers of Americans say they feel uneasy about the state of the economy. The Federal Reserve said this week that “the risks of higher unemployment and higher inflation have risen.” Some economists in the last month have increased their expectations of a recession in the next year.
So who’s feeling good about the U.S. economy? The White House.
President Donald Trump posted Wednesday night that he will hold a “Big News Conference” on Thursday morning “concerning a MAJOR TRADE DEAL WITH REPRESENTATIVES OF A BIG, AND HIGHLY RESPECTED, COUNTRY.”
Privately, White House aides say, Trump’s mood has been ecstatic since he rolled out his new global tariffs, rolled back his new global tariffs and began a whirlwind worldwide trade deal negotiating sprint. He’s reveling in the naysayers who doubt his use of tariffs, they say.
The president isn’t seeking an immediate economic or trade win to inject optimism into financial markets or the hearts of domestic consumers, one senior administration official said. The president “has a vision.”
The official told NOTUS that the concerns from a couple of weeks ago — when the stock market was plummeting, 401ks were taking significant hits and the bond market presented such a problem that Trump paused his tariff plan — are “gone.”
“President Trump returning to office was the best thing that happened to the American economy in four years, and the data backs this up,” White House spokesman Kush Desai told NOTUS in a statement.
But some close to the White House are beginning to get more antsy for some tangible sign of progress on trade negotiations or more permanent tariff rollbacks, especially after early White House confidence about its ability to negotiate dozens of “bespoke” deals in 90 days.
“We’ve all been hearing a lot of talk about, ‘Oh well, things are going well in the negotiations and the phone is ringing off the hook,’” said Stephen Moore, an economist outside the White House who talks to Trump. “The investors love to hear that, and the business owners like to hear that. But then we’re still waiting for the first deal, big deal, to be announced.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, who said he is in regular contact with the White House, told NOTUS he has been encouraging the administration to negotiate lower tariffs.
“What I’ve urged the president to do is use the extraordinary leverage he has right now to negotiate much lower tariffs from our trading partners,” Cruz said. “And if the result in 30, 60, 90 days from now is global tariffs being markedly lower, that would be a dramatic and even historic win for jobs and American workers.”
“I think it’s more confusion and worry than it is necessarily pessimism,” said Wilbur Ross, the president’s former commerce secretary, who remains supportive of his tariff negotiations. “Certainty is what’s been lacking.”
The White House has sought to buy itself some time, saying that this is just a “transition” period as negotiations move ahead. In the end, Trump says, the country will reap major benefits from the tariffs and new deals, including the reinvigoration of America’s manufacturing industry.
Administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is leading negotiations with some countries, have said that at least 18 countries have approached the U.S. with concrete proposals to satisfy Trump’s goal of rebalancing trade deals. And more than 75 countries reached out to signal their openness to negotiating, officials said.
Thursday’s anticipated first trade deal is the “FIRST OF MANY TO COME,” Desai said on X Wednesday night. But the White House has been saying a flood of deals were coming for weeks.
In mid-April, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the administration had “more than 15 deals, pieces of paper put on the table, proposals that are actively being considered” and said the announcements of some deals would come “very soon.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in late April that a deal was done, and pending approval from the other country — which he wouldn’t name — that he expected shortly.
Trump himself told Time Magazine on April 22 he’s made “200 deals,” and that they would be announced “over the next three to four weeks.”
On Tuesday, Bessent told a congressional committee that while negotiations with China were not moving, agreements with other key trading partners could be announced as soon as this week. He didn’t specify which countries, though the administration has hinted in recent weeks that good progress has been made with Asian countries, particularly India.
The president’s anticipated announcement on Thursday would be the first time those comments bear out. But even after the “MAJOR” deal, the administration has dozens more to complete, meaning consumer good prices, shortages and more will remain a problem for the White House.
Trump has maintained that the U.S. isn’t the country that really needs the trade agreements.
“We don’t have to sign deals, they have to sign deals with us,” Trump told reporters during his meeting this week with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. “They want a piece of our market. We don’t want a piece of their market.”
Trump has been loud about the trade negotiations — and more muted about the economy overall, when not trying to pin blame on his predecessor.
“I think the good parts are the ‘Trump economy’ and the bad parts are the ‘Biden economy’ because he’s done a terrible job,” the president said in an NBC interview broadcast this past weekend.
A White House official echoed this in a statement to NOTUS.
“The first half of the quarter was definitely Biden, but things have got better since President Trump was inaugurated,” the official said. “However, it’ll take a little more time to pass the Big Beautiful Bill with critical tax cuts, negotiate trade deals, and further deregulate the economy — so it’s not completely the President’s economy yet.”
Ross said Trump’s not sweating.
“He is eager to make deals,” he said of Trump. “There’s no question about that, but it isn’t because of feeling under pressure. He likes to get things done.”
The prospect of giant tariff spikes or sweeping trade deals have largely sucked up all the oxygen for any other markers of economic health. But there have been a few positive recent signs for the economy. Last week’s jobs report showed that the economy added 177,000 new jobs — a figure higher than the estimates — and the stock market has rallied from the lows it hit in the aftermath of the initial tariff announcement, providing the White House more confidence after the economy retracted in the first quarter by 0.3%. March’s consumer price index report showed that core prices were increasing at a slower rate and that inflation had eased.
“When will they learn to stop doubting President Trump?” Leavitt said in the wake of the report.
Still, American opinion is shaky. Consumer sentiment fell 20 points by the end of April, indicating a lack of confidence in the economy. Recent polls have shown a majority of Americans have soured on the president’s handling of the economy, with 71% in a CNN poll saying the economy was doing poorly, and 46% of Americans in a Gallup poll saying this is Trump’s economy.
Low-cost goods popular with many American consumers, from companies like Temu or Shein, are now subject to high tariffs as part of the administration’s battle with China over trade. Americans, Trump told NBC last weekend, “don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five.”
“There’s been no articulation of the benefits,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office and president of the American Action Forum, said of Trump’s trade war with China. “Same is true for Canada. What do we want from the Canadians? I don’t know. So when they say to the American public, ‘You’re going to get something great with this,’ it’d be useful if they told us what. Because that has really not happened.”
Trump has acknowledged that failure to square economic discomfort with the American public could have drastic consequences for Republicans everywhere in next year’s midterms.
“I don’t see them saying there’s compensation out there anywhere. You could say to people, ‘Look, this is a great national moment. We need your patriotism. We’re involved in a great struggle, buy war bonds,’ or something. They haven’t done that either,” Holtz-Eakin said.
The senior administration official said that in their messaging meetings, aides focus on the mid-term and long-term sentiment of Americans’ feelings toward the economy and not the day-to-day changes that could cause officials to dramatically change direction, more so than last month’s tariff pause.
“We feel confident that if we stay the course, people will see benefits,” the official said. Part of this strategy is leaning on the president and trusting his instincts — something the official said is a change from how some big decisions were handled in Trump’s first administration.
“Some of this is bumpy waters right now, no question about it. But I remain confident that six months from now, things are going to look a lot better,” Moore told NOTUS.
Trump, his allies and his supporters in Congress continue to believe that the aggregate of his economic agenda, including a bill to extend and potentially expand the Trump tax cuts, revenue from tariffs, deregulation and major business investments across the country, is the winning message — not just trade policy.
But not all are sold.
“The only word to describe it all is uncertainty. In fact, the only thing that’s certain is there will be more uncertainty ahead,” said Scott Lincicome, the Cato Institute’s vice president of general economics. “All of these 3D chess justifications for Trump tariffs are pretty silly. The guy just likes tariffs.”
—
Jasmine Wright is a reporter at NOTUS. Violet Jira and Mark Alfred are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows.