Republican frontrunner for the White House Donald Trump has warned of a “very massive recession” and said it’s a “terrible time” to invest in stocks, in an interview to Washington Post.
He said the US was sitting on a “financial bubble”, unemployment was much higher than reflected in official numbers and the country was being “ripped” by other countries.
“I’m pessimistic,” Trump said. “Unless changes are made. Changes could be made.” But the good news is, he has a solution: Trump. “I can fix it. I can fix it pretty quickly.”
He told Post reporters the key to his proposed fix is a turnaround on trade, by renegotiating agreements that, according to him are skewed against the US currently. And large income tax cuts.
As a leading contender for the top job of a country central to the global economy, and which triggered the 2008 financial crisis, his comments will be followed with some concern.
Trump is already being watched closely. President Barack Obama said on Friday many world leaders brought up Trump with him in private conversations at the recent nuclear summit.
{{/usCountry}}Trump is already being watched closely. President Barack Obama said on Friday many world leaders brought up Trump with him in private conversations at the recent nuclear summit.
{{/usCountry}}But as the Post said Trump is way too gloomy and out of sync with the current assessment of the economy by multiple experts, and his predictions have been wrong in the past.
In 2012, for instance, he said that if Obama was re-elected president oil and gas prices would go through the roof. Quite the opposite happened, fuelled by rising natural gas production.
Trump has been pessimistic about the economy questioning the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis, arguing unemployment is far more than 5% cited by the government. He is now saying these are “precarious times”.
“Part of the reason it’s precarious is because we are being ripped so badly by other countries. We are being ripped so badly by China. It just never ends. Nobody’s ever going to stop it.”
On the stock market, his assessment was blunt: “I think we’re sitting on an economic bubble. A financial bubble.” He said that was trued for the entire economy, and not a specific sector.