We are told by Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker, Damian Paletta, and Josh Dawsey that Donald Trump is "alarmed" and "worried that a downturn could imperil his reelection, even as administration officials acknowledge that they have not planned for a possible recession."
Trump has "impulsively lashed out at the Federal Reserve" and reports that he "pressured" Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to declare China is manipulating currency, as well as his decision to delay tariffs on Chinese imports because he didn't want to depress holiday retail sales. That's all plausible cause for a reelection concern by a U.S. president, but it's also some tea leaf reading. After all, this is a guy who has a history of rooting for economic chaos.
Back in 2014, he told Fox News that what solved America not being great was when "the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell and everything is a disaster. Then you'll have a, you know, you'll have riots to go back to where we used to be when we were great." So it's just as plausible that Trump, not being your typical politician and not necessarily understanding that a poor economy is disaster for a president, might just think his key to hanging on will be whipping his fervent followers into riots. He'll blame an economic downturn on everyone but himself, that much we do know.
Maybe he does get it. He has been tweeting about how the U.S. is "now, by far, the Biggest, Strongest and Most Powerful Economy in the World. […] Consumers are in the best shape ever, plenty of cash. Business Optimism is at an All Time High!" Okay. Also the "Fake News Media is doing everything they can to crash the economy because they think that will be bad for me and my re-election." Or maybe he's just responding to the voices in his head.
The Post says that Trump's White House advisers are trying to keep him in the dark about how bad it might be. "Trump's economic advisers have been delivering the president upbeat assessments in which they argue that the domestic economy is stronger than many forecasters are making it out to be." Which, of course they are, they don't want to have to deal with his tantrums. Maybe that's why they let him fantasize about buying Greenland. One Republican who is apparently in the know on these discussions says that's not keeping Trump from believing that he's being sabotaged by the establishment. "He's rattled," this Republican said. "He thinks that all the people that do this economic forecasting are a bunch of establishment weenies—elites who don't know anything about the real economy and they're against Trump."
In other words, the U.S. and global economy is still at the whims of a paranoid, incompetent mad man. At least he won't have the debt ceiling to play with this year.