The details of what’s happening with the economy are frankly a bit beyond my ken so I was grateful to see this easy explainer from Josh Marshall today. (And you should subscribe if you can. His site is super valuable right now.) The Atlanta Fed has again lowered its projection for first quarter 2025 GDP. It had been predicting growth of 2.3%. At the end of last week that was revised to 1.5% contraction and this morning they were again down-revised 2.8% contraction, or in other words 2.8% negative growth. To be clear these aren’t final or official stats. We’re only two-thirds of the way through the quarter. They are a prediction based on current indicators. But if it’s not clear that would mean a steep move into recession. And the numbers which presage that outcome are largely tied to general economic uncertainty and various collective economic decisions based on the expectations of a dramatic ramp up in U.S. tariffs and tariff retaliation. Normally, you wouldn’t expect that an administration would be able to manage such a stark reversal six weeks into a presidency. The first three weeks of the quarter weren’t even under Trump. What’s critical however is that consumers and businesses have known about or expected big new tariffs since mid-November. And a lot of this is an import spending spree trying to get out ahead of the onset of tariffs. So in that sense, as an economic reality, Trump’s second administration really began almost four months ago. That’s more…