Stock markets continued their downward slide on Monday amid growing concerns that Donald Trump’s economic shock doctrine will trigger a major economic downturn. The “golden age” of economic prosperity he promised during his 2024 campaign doesn’t seem to be coming anytime soon, and just weeks into his term Trump is scrambling to make excuses for an increasingly grim economic forecast. 

During his first term in office, and throughout his reelection campaign, the president regularly claimed that upward trends in major stock markets were a reflection of his economic and political genius. Downward slides were inevitably his opponents’ fault. On Friday, however, he blamed shady “globalists” for cratering markets. On Sunday, during a discussion of the potential fallout of his trade war against Canada, Mexico, and China, the president told Fox News that, in fact, Americans shouldn’t “really watch the stock market.” 

“If you look at China, they have a 100 year perspective,” Trump added. “We go by quarters. And you can’t go by that.”

When asked directly by host Maria Bartiromo if he was bracing for a recessionary economy, Trump claimed that while he “[hates to predict things like that […] there is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America.”

When asked a similar question on Air Force One later that afternoon, Trump reverted to the scammy get-rich-quick promises of his campaign. “All I know is this, we’re going to take in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs, and we’re going to become so rich you’re not going to know when to spend all that money,” he told reporters.

When asked what he had to say to Americans who were seeing their retirement investments fall in the past few weeks, the president replied that “the tariffs are going to be the greatest thing we’ve done as a country.” 

“It’s going to make our country rich again,” he added. 

But before those piles of cash materialize, Trump and his closest economic advisers are conceding that Americans will suffer.

Earlier this month, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick acknowledged that “there is going to be a short period of time where there will be some higher prices on certain products,” but claimed that it “is not inflation, that’s nonsense.” Last week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent defended the tariffs by telling the Economic Club of New York that “access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream.” Bessent previously used the same term Trump did — warning of a “transition” period — to discuss the possibility of a recession economy. Trump, meanwhile, has on multiple occasions, including during his address to Congress last week, said Americans will experience an economic “disturbance” or “disruption” as a result of his tariff plan.

Economists have warned that Trump’s trade war and tariff obsession will likely lead to sharp increases in costs for consumers, supply chain disruptions, and slowed GDP growth. Even Republican lawmakers — already struggling with constituent backlash over the slash-and-burn tactics of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government efficiency — are growing antsy. 

“The Canadian tariffs will definitely have a detrimental impact on the economy of Maine and on border communities in particular,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told The Hill on Monday. “I think it freezes investment until they know exactly what the impact is going to be. So I understand the president’s desire to level the playing field, but Canada’s just not the problem in Maine.”

One anonymous Republican senator told The Hill that maybe if Trump’s “approvals keep diving and the economy starts to pinch,” the president would roll back his increasingly damaging agenda. In the meantime, the chaos isn’t helping anyone. And while the president would like to promise Americans so much money they’ll have no idea what to spend it on, it’s a sales pitch from a man whose companies have filed for bankruptcy six times.