'Weird numbers': Expert says 'scary' tariff pain about to 'become real very soon'

A financial analyst highlighted a "weird number" he expected to see in a new Commerce Department report.

The report showed the U.S. economy had contracted at an annualized 0.3% rate in the first quarter, as businesses rushed to import goods ahead of president Donald Trump's tariffs, and Yahoo Finance senior columnist Rick Newman told "CNN News Central" how the trade wars were only going to make things worse.

"American importers were loading up on stuff from overseas because they anticipated the Trump tariffs and imports actually detracts from GDP, so it's not going to tell us a lot, and then when we get the GDP number for the next quarter, the one we're in now, it's probably going to be distorted in the other direction because imports are going to slow dramatically," Newman said. "That's already happening, so that's going to tell us, you know, what we know from the first three months of the year."

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"I don't think markets are going to pay a lot of attention to the GDP number," he added. "Markets are much more focused on data and indicators telling us what's going to happen in the next three, four, six months, and that is stuff like consumer confidence. We're going to get job numbers on Friday. Those could be down, showing that employers are becoming reluctant to hire, so we're going to get a weird number today, and then we're going to move on."

"Weird numbers – I'm here for it," said host Kate Bolduan.

Newman then explained that Americans were bracing for economic pain due to Trump's tariffs.

"Consumer confidence is tanking, it is at recessionary levels, and it's for one reason," Newman said. "It's because Americans are hearing a lot about the tariffs. They're not really seeing the effect yet in stores, but they know that tariffs are a tax that is going to push prices up. They expect inflation to get a lot worse. In fact, by one measure, the University of Michigan survey, consumers think inflation is going to be worse under Trump than they expected it to be under Biden, and as a reminder, inflation hit 9 percent under Biden in 2022. It was the worst problem for him, and Americans are bracing for even worse."

"So once these effects of the tariffs actually start to show up in stores, people are going to buy less, people are going to get concerned about the health of the economy, about layoffs," Newman added. "We're probably very soon going to start seeing slowdowns and layoffs with port workers and truckers and transportation workers, because there's not going to be there aren't going to be any pallets of imports to be moving from ports to to the rest of the economy. So all this stuff about tariffs, that has been kind of scary, but mostly theoretical. It is going to start to become real very soon."

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