David Wessel:
Well, in our country, it’s being felt, I think, by businesses and maybe some consumers just pulling back. If you’re not sure what the policy of the government is going to be on the goods that you import, or the parts you need to make your product, you’re going to be less willing to expand.
So there’s a lot of talk about uncertainty. And I think what that means is, if you’re not — if it’s not clear what’s going to happen, you pull back. If everybody delays, that’s how we get a recession. And a lot of forecasters are anticipating a recession.
One really worrisome sign here is not the stock market, but what’s happened to the bond market and the value of the dollar. And, basically, yields on treasury bonds have gone up, the value of the dollar has gone down. And some people are interpreting that as an indication that the world is less confident about the safety of investing in the U.S.
And that would be a long — if that’s true, if that persists, that will have long-lasting effects, and they’re not good ones.
