Trump Blames Biden For Disastrous Q1 Economic News: ‘nothing To Do With Tariffs’

President Donald Trump has responded to news of the first contraction of the U.S. economy since 2022 in an entirely predictable manner: by blaming former President Joe Biden.

Trump took office on January 20th, three weeks into a 13-week quarter. Since then, he has unveiled a controversial trade tariff policy that has cratered markets, reduced the value of 401(k)s by 20%, and in many cases frozen corporate plans for growth. The New York Times reports on the economic news:

U.S. gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, declined at an 0.3 percent annual rate in the first three months of the year, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. It was, on the surface, a stunning reversal from the strong growth at the end of last year, when the economy expanded at a 2.4 percent rate.

But the first quarter figure was misleading, the result of quirks in the way government data measured the surge in imports as businesses and consumers raced to get ahead of expected tariffs. More reliable data on consumer spending and business investment suggested that growth slowed in the first quarter but remained fundamentally solid.

Trump is not one to see a spate of negative news coverage without responding. On Wednesday morning, minutes after the negative economic news emerged, he wrote on Truth Social that “This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s,” and insisted that this “has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS.” Trump wrote:

This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s. I didn’t take over until January 20th. Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers. Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden “Overhang.” This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!

Trump’s rhetoric regarding his controversial tariff policy has been inconsistent, initially insisting that no deal would be made due to the reasonable desire to move manufacturing back to the United States, although many experts argue that such a transition would take three to five yearsfor corporations to complete. He has since claimed to have made 200 deals in an interview with Time, although none have been announced since his 90-day pause on the tariffs was implemented as a result of the bond market getting “yippy” and “afraid”, as Trump described it.