Inflation Surges, The War Is Failing, Epstein And Corruption - America Needs New Leadership And A New Direction

America is on an unsustainable course. We must demand change, now, and not wail until January......

Morning everyone. Today we are going to focus on the new CPI report and Trump’s overall economic record. For a broader take on this moment, one of both great opportunity and peril, check out my new weekly talk and analysis:

The Crisis The World Faces Today Is Trump (New Video, Written Analysis)

This morning the main gauge of inflation, the Consumer Price Index, came in above expectations today at a staggering increase of 0.9 percent in March:

We are going to hear a lot today about how the enormous jump in CPI is temporary, no biggie. It is critical we fight that false and facile framing in the days ahead for data we’ve received in recent weeks makes it clear that prior to the war Trump’s reckless economic and domestic policies - illegal tariffs, mass deportation, tax cuts for the wealthy and savage cuts to health care, assault on science, unprecedented corruption and state control over the economy, embrace of fossil fuels and dismissal of clean alternatives - had already done significan damage to the strong, recovering economy he inherited. Job and GDP growth had slowed. Inflation had reignited. The long term fiscal outlook for the US had deteriorated. Interest rates were not coming down due to rising inflation concerns.

And given the gravity of the economic damage that has already occurred, and the dangerous geopolitical the war has unleashed on the world, there is no snapping back to a before time. Everything will be different now, and probably much worse for the US and the world.

Here are the trend lines for the other two main gauges of inflation, PCE and PPI. Note the rise pre-war:

There is one overwhelming conclusion from the data we are about to review today - that Trump took us to war, with all the geopolitical and economic risks involved, and with an economy dramatically weakening here at home, should be sufficient reason to remove him from office. The recklessness of the decision, and the unnecessary damage he has caused is another reason (and there are many more) he should no longer be leading this great nation.

Let’s now review some more data.

Trump’s failed war has already cost the world as much as COVID or the global financial crisis, and as much as the entire annual output of China. One man did this, one vainglorious, addled, ridiculous man:

The OECD has projected that the war and Trump’s policies will produce slower US growth in the coming years:

The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow projections show q1 2026 GDP growth cratering since the war began from 3.2% to 1.3%:

Using this new data Trump is on track to have overseen the slowest economic growth of any American President in the last 100 years:

Under Trump’s policies job growth had already slowed, dramatically. This picture is unlikely to improve given all this other data:

Here’s is the job growth we’ve seen so far under Trump compared to other Presidents. Like GDP growth the worst net performance since Hoover:

The war is dangerously eroding our already weakened fiscal condition:

This morning’s University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey reported it’s lowest reading in the history of the survey, going back 65 years. Here is a chart with a slightly different way of reading the data, showing it now at its lowest level ever. Trump is a titanic fuck up:

The economic and societal effects of Trump’s savage assault on research, public health, and science are only just beginning to be felt. Here’s a conservative estimate of the impact of Trump’s health care cuts on piece of what is coming, the uninsured rate. Years of progress heartlessly undone, on purpose, to pay for tax cuts for Trump, his friends, and his donors:

Republicans return to Washington next week with the evidence of their collective and historic failure all out there, for all of us to see. We should be demanding change, immediate and consequential change, with every fiber of our being. That we are resting our hopes for a better outcome in the Middle East on JD Vance, the least experienced Vice President in all of our history, an extremist, a white supremacist, a person equally as ridiculous as Trump, is why we must be unforgiving and resolute in our work to bring change in the coming days. For while Trump strives for regime change abroad we as proud, patriotic Americans must be demanding it here at home. This regime must change, now.

I want to end today with a meditation on the Founders’ wisdom. Their primary mission in constructing our government was to prevent someone like Trump from ever coming to power. For they understood the destructive power of unchecked Mad Kings. And perhaps in our affluence, in our eighty years of Pax Americana and American Exceptionalism, in the betrayal of the Roberts Court, and the unprecedented rancid propaganda of the right wing noise machine, we as a nation had wandered from the Founders essential teachings. It is why I remain optimistic that this terrible period in our history can become a powerful and awful lesson to rising generations of Americans, and rising generations of the people of all nations, about why democracy simply must prevail over autocracy. It is why I am not giving up hope that what can come from all of this is a “new birth of freedom” here and everywhere. For all the world is seeing now what comes from Mad Kings, and why it is we - and they - must fight for something far, far better.

For time and space reasons our “Let’s Get To Work” section can be found here.

Keep working hard all. We have a country to save, and an election to win, together! - Simon