I've got no education so I can't figure this out. What economic agenda is served by tanking the stock markets, reducing interest rates and raising the debt ceiling? Stock market crashes have in the past incited recessions, reducing interest rates is one way of trying to correct a recession, but why increase government debt? Reducing interest rates and increasing government debt are measures that will increase money in circulation but why take so much value out of the stock markets?
Or is chaos the point?
You've unfortunately jumbled up several subjects, and I have studied economics to the point that I look at it as not unlike doing time in prison (my lame joke of the day.) But none of what I am saying below should be construed as support for Trump, just trying to explain.
Trump's "economic agenda," what he believes, is that international trade has been manipulated to the point that the US economy is harmed. In his opinion going with tariffs, and reciprocal tariffs, is about forcing trading nations to realign. You could look at it as domestic industry protectionism and growth, and there is plenty of commentary from Trump on the nature of how many manufacturing jobs we should have. But I would argue there is not enough business enticement to dramatically increase US manufacturing growth, a little perhaps but not something meaningful to our overall economic model.
Now the stock market is as zero sum as Trump's transactional nature, anytime someone wins someone has to lose. It does not make much sense for any President to intentionally tank the markets, but it may have been a necessary evil to start the path of Trump's goals for the US economy.
The debt ceiling has become, long ago, a joke of a mechanism to control the amount of debt the US can take on. There is no evidence, no economic evidence, that the debt ceiling has slowed or even influenced fiscal decision making as it relates to economic and debt addition outcome. It is a political toy, only deployed when there is a political reason to do so. Not economic. Raising the debt ceiling this past time in concert with yet another continuing resolution was not about true economic or fiscal policy, but was about buying time while his other actions started to play out. As for the amount of actual debt the US adds this fiscal year and next, that is yet to be seen, but the evidence points to another uptick in deficits and debt for at least the next 2 years (likely 5 or more.) Income from tariff taxation is never going to make up the difference when it comes to an actual economic fault Trump is setting up.
Any recession we are now likely to see is purely based on an economic reality that altering international trade so violently while removing so much from the federal workforce will alter all 4 of the math points in how GDP is calculated. Consumer Spending (already going down,) Business Investment (which has to pause over tariff prices,) Government Spending (which is somewhat maintained but we are seeing layoffs so that may trail a bit as an indicator,) and Net Exports (which will experience a large shift import and export but not become a positive number anytime soon.) We should see several quarters of GDP flatline or decline while the economy determines its new natural floor.
Interest rates is one of several monetary policy controls handled by the Fed. Because Trump is intentionally harming supply, in several ways, there will be a demand pulling supply inflation spike we will see realized in the near future. And because of, the Fed cannot lower interest rates and encourage more debt based spending on less supply. That will make inflation experienced even worse.
