We always knew the next few quarters were not going to be easy for businesses, consumers, or markets. You can probably throw economic forecasters into the mix too. Economists have been sounding the warning for months that a tariff shock was coming and likely to be stagflationary. Yet, months passed, and people started asking, “Where’s the beef?” Trade policy uncertainty eased, small business confidence jumped, and attention shifted to the OBBBA (Chart 1). Markets largely ignored the latest machinations on trade policy, choosing the glass half-full view that tariffs could have been worse and the pass-through to ... (full story)