The New York Times will never admit that it completely botched its crystal ball readings on the so-called impending doom of the Trump economy. Instead, the Old Gray Lady will just keep kicking the can down the road indefinitely in the hopes that it will eventually be right.
Times Chief Economics Correspondent Ben Casselman came out with a real humdinger disguised as “News Analysis” that was plastered on the front page of the January 20 print edition headlined, “Economic Toll Of Trump Era Takes Its Time.”
“News Analysis” is journo-speak for opinion columns being dubiously passed off as news.
Casselman’s method of spin involved actually trying to make it seem like the current economic condition is similar to what he allegedly “inherited” from his predecessor Joe Biden. No, he wasn’t joking: “For all the chaos along the way, President Trump’s first year back in the White House is ending with an economy that looks, by most conventional measures, much like the one he inherited. Unemployment is low, consumer spending is strong and inflation is stubbornly high but gradually improving.”
“Inflation is stubbornly high” is a funny way of characterizing a relatively stable 2.7 percent inflation rate, when he previously characterized a May 2023 inflation rate of 4.0 percent under Biden as a sign that price hikes had “cooled significantly since the middle of last year.”
That’s about as far as the smug Casselman or The Times writ large will go to admitting they were actually wrong about anything pertaining to Trump. After all, his publication was pinky-swearing since June of last year that the Trump inflation apocalypse was just around the corner. But Casselman just attributed that to experts missing the mark and glossing over the fact that his own paper doing much of the Trump-haters’s pencil-pushing: “Tariffs, Mr. Trump’s signature economic policy, haven’t set off the manufacturing renaissance he promised, but nor have they caused the surge in inflation that many forecasters feared.”
But never mind, you should still be having a nervous breakdown, according to Casselman. “Yet it would be a mistake to think that Mr. Trump’s actions left the economy unscathed.” Casselman decried Trump’s “all-out assault on many of the institutions and policy paradigms that have long been seen by leaders of both major political parties as the foundations of American economic strength.”
Casselman accused Trump of politicizing an already political Federal Reserve and lambasted him for firing the Biden-appointed head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Erika McEntarfer — a Democrat donor — for displaying gross ineptitude as just a few of the anecdotes he used to highlight the president’s supposedly destructive behavior.
“[E]conomists from across the ideological spectrum warn that Mr. Trump is setting the country on a path that will, in the long run, leave the economy less dynamic, the financial system less stable and Americans less prosperous in the decades ahead,” Casselman bleated. Yeah, sure, because the experts were so spot-on about Trump steering the U.S. economy into an iceberg during his first year in office, right Casselman? It’s not until the 25th paragraph that Casselman all but undercuts his bellyaching:
None of those concerns is likely to lead to a recession in 2026. Indeed, most forecasters expect growth to pick up this year. And the U.S. economy still has a wealth of advantages — including the absence of an obvious international alternative — that won’t disappear overnight.
Oh, so what’s all the blathering about then Casselman? The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow model even forecasts a whopping 5.4 percent growth rate for Q4 2025. As economist Daniel Lacalle noted in a December 25 column, “One year into Donald Trump’s new presidency, the verdict from the data is clear: the apocalyptic consensus forecasts have failed, and the United States stands as the only major developed economy combining strong growth, controlled inflation and fiscal consolidation.”
Of course, Casselman’s disingenuous take comparing the Trump economy to the one he inherited from Biden is utterly ridiculous.
Heritage Foundation Chief Economist EJ Antoni noted in May 2025 that “Month after month, the government bean-counters under former-president Biden published overly optimistic estimates for everything from job growth to the size of the economy, only to have those numbers routinely—and quietly—revised down later.” In fact, whatever so-called economic growth occurred under Biden was being bolstered by the fact that there’s been an explosion in government debt, which exposed the existence of underlying weakness. More than half of Americans were struggling to pay bills and save money in the Biden economy as of November 2024 due to a persistent cost-of-living crisis.
NOW - Citadel's CEO says decisions made under the Biden administration "were so so poorly thought out in terms of economic consequences, it cost the U.S. economy dearly." pic.twitter.com/y9zlWeCYrn
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) January 21, 2026
Casselman is the same stooge who tried to make it seem like 3 percent Q2 GDP growth that dwarfed expectations under Trump was bad, while an anemic 1.1 percent growth in Q1 2023 under Biden was good.
