NEW YORK — As Wall Street braces for another week of “economic rollercoasters,” the much-anticipated jobs report for April is expected to show surprising hiring gains amid the chaos triggered by President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. These new data points are sure to confound experts who are already prepping their best “Is this a recession?” memes.
The stock market’s reaction to Trump’s tariff hike on April 2 was nothing short of a disaster, as it plummeted in one of the most dramatic single-day drops since the COVID-19 pandemic. Financial analysts struggled to find words for what they called “a catastrophic mishandling of global trade,” but most seemed to agree that the phrase “trading in literal garbage” was fitting. Then, in true Trumpian fashion, the president reversed course only days later, suspending tariffs and sending the stock market into the rarefied air of one of its largest single-day increases in history.
Despite these swings in fortunes, economists are optimistic that the jobs report will reflect a resilient private sector, bolstered by the confused, scattered energy of businesses caught between an escalating trade war and the sweet relief of tariff reversals. “This is the most American thing to happen in years,” said Harvard economist Henry Schultz. “Business owners are just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks, except the spaghetti is tariffs and the wall is 4,000 pages of trade agreements.”
As for Wall Street, analysts remain “cautiously pessimistic” and “hopelessly optimistic” at the same time, a sentiment echoed by traders who are already predicting another economic meltdown before the markets open on Monday.
© 2025 The Daily Snort
