Keeps Gambling With Our Lives......

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 Guida

resident 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.

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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. 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.

Add it to the catalog of ways Trump is living dangerously — and, so far, mostly getting away with it.

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.

“Some people have said, ‘Oh, he just kind of got lucky with the AI investment boom.’ I don’t think that’s wrong, but I think it’s overstated,” Jared Bernstein, who served as chief economist to former President Joe Biden, told me. “Business investment is, what, 12, 13 percent of GDP? He’s got an unemployment rate of 4.3 percent. He’s got rising real wages. That by itself helps move consumer spending forward.”

The president himself is part of the reason for the resilience: GOP tax cuts are expected to provide a huge power-up to economic expansion this year by boosting refunds for individuals and offering immediate deductions for businesses making certain investments. And the administration’s deregulatory efforts have repeatedly driven stocks to new highs, which has helped increase the wealth of households invested in the market.

A White House official touted these parts of the administration’s agenda in response to my thesis. “Our economic policies that have the biggest ripple effect throughout the broader economy are not exactly ‘gambles,’” said the official, who was granted anonymity to speak freely.

But some of the political chaos bombarding the economy may also help cancel itself out. Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, noted that only a week ago, markets were absorbing the news that the Supreme Court had overturned some of Trump’s tariffs, a decision that cut the overall effective tariff rate, particularly because of lower duties on some Asian countries like China. That could lead to lower inflation, whereas higher oil prices might push it up.

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

Trump’s own effect, too, is hard to disentangle. He has demonstrated a willingness to be responsive to the desires of corporate America and to the anxieties of financial markets, but he’s also flouted both of those things far more than he did in his first term.

The full scope of risks associated with the Iran crisis is unclear. There are dynamics at play here that could cause serious headaches, particularly beyond U.S. borders.

“The bear case is that a wounded, angry but intact Iranian regime continues energy and other attacks on the Gulf as one of [its] few means of leverage, and even if there is at some point a lull or ceasefire, tries to take the Gulf states hostage, with the threat of renewed attacks,” said Krishna Guha, vice chair at Evercore ISI, in a note to clients. “This would imply more persistent elevated prices for both oil and gas.”

Yet even a lasting increase in the price per barrel of oil, which has jumped above $80 since the conflict began, would still likely have a small impact on economic growth, he added.

The economy, in other words, seems like it might weather this just fine.

That’s not to say there hasn’t been some damage from some of Trump’s policies or that everything is hunky-dory.

Certainly, many businesses — particularly smaller ones — are feeling the squeeze of high import taxes. And a bigger percentage of household debt was in serious delinquency in the final quarter of 2025 than a year before, underscoring the strains that have made affordability a central theme in November’s midterm elections.

Manufacturing remains anemic, despite the administration’s focus on reshoring, and political chaos in trade and other areas has likely held back some business investment.

What’s more, there’s no guarantee that the teflon economy will last forever. Varied risks posed by artificial intelligence are hanging over the U.S.: Stocks would drop precipitously if the new technology doesn’t live up to the hype in boosting productivity, while even an AI success story could lead to a surge in unemployment as some jobs are replaced.

And if damage to energy infrastructure from the war in the Middle East leads oil prices to surge above $100 a barrel, that would likely topple the more benign inflation levels we’ve seen in the past couple of years.

But for now, nothing on the macroeconomic dashboard looks like it’s blinking red.

Still, if the U.S. economy keeps on trucking — amid all this tumult — that might embolden future administrations to be even more experimental. Bernstein, for his part, said Trump’s tariffs prove the economy can withstand tax increases.

“The lesson is that we have a much more resilient macroeconomy than most people realize, and it’s a very potent reminder that we should always discount the special interests who cry, ‘Any penny you take from the industry I represent will bring the economy to its knees,’” he said.

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, only 35 percent of Americans approve of his handling of the economy, and just 29 percent 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.