Trump Keeps Gambling With the Economy — And Getting Away With It . . .if the current state of relative stability ever does crack | POLITICO

President Donald Trump has launched an attack on Iran, a scenario that has long been the clearest and most direct threat to one of his favored political barometers: gas prices. | 
------Stephanie Scarbrough/AP

Trump Keeps Gambling With the Economy — And Getting Away With It

 

President Donald Trump has taken one risk after another that could have destabilized the American economy. Iran is the latest crisis to test U.S. economic resilience.

By Victoria Guida03/05/2026 05:55 AM EST

Victoria Guida is an economics correspondent at POLITICO and author of Capital Letter, a reported column that probes policies shaping the American economy and is closely read by policymakers and business executives. 

"President Donald Trump has spent his second term turning risky economic gambles into a way of life.

• He has implemented sweeping global tariffs that have dramatically increased the cost of doing business across the world. 
• He has sharply decreased the number of people immigrating to the U.S. 
• He has pushed for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates under any circumstance, even though inflation has not entirely cooled."

And now, he’s launched an attack on Iran, a scenario that has long been the clearest and most direct threat to one of Trump’s favored political barometers: gas prices.

 

The U.S. now finds itself in another acute economic risk situation — an assault that Trump has said could last four weeks or more. 

1.  The conflict has led to a jump in oil prices, though not quite to worst-case levels, and markets have been jittery about the prospect of more expensive energy and higher U.S. federal debt, stemming from the cost of the U.S.-Israel war with Iran.
2. Add it to the catalog of ways Trump is living dangerously — and, so far, mostly getting away with it.
3. In so many ways, that is the story of Trump’s economic stewardship up to this point. 

His disruptive policies have left some dents, including serious damage to his approval rating, but by the biggest readings of its health, the U.S. economy — measured by overall growth, the job market, the stock market, even inflation — largely keeps absorbing what he throws at it.

Of course, the extraordinary amount of business spending associated with the buildout of artificial intelligence has also been a significant factor keeping the economy plowing ahead at a solid pace.

But mostly, the U.S. economy is just a consumer-driven powerhouse that seems hard to crush...

“The shocks that have been hitting the economy are quite challenging to disentangle — not only the magnitude of the things, but also the duration,”

---Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management

SPOILER ALERT 
But there is also one key way in which Trump is not getting away with all of this: public opinion.
According to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, 

1. only 35% of Americans approve of his handling of the economy, and 
2. just 29% approve of his approach to inflation.

That doesn’t bode well for the president and the GOP if the current state of relative stability ever does crack, whether from Trump-inflicted wounds or from something else entirely."

READERS ARE ENCOURAGED TO CONTINUE READING: POLITICO/Capital Letter