Tariffs have emerged as Americans' top economic concern, and CNN's Allison Morrow said president Donald Trump's trade wars may have already tipped the U.S. economy into a recession.
The Commerce Department issued a report Wednesday showing the gross domestic product contracted at an annual rate of 0.3 percent in the first quarter, the first drop since 2022, and consumer confidence has fallen for five straight months, all of which has sparked fears of a recession.
"We were talking about the threat of recession," said "CNN This Morning" host Audie Cornish, "and I also remember covering the last president [Joe Biden], where we talked about a 'vibecession,' and it was like always this conversation about, is it real? Is it not?"
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Morrow said it wasn't too soon to worry about a recession.
"It is real really hard to know whether we're in a recession [or] whether we're heading toward one," Morrow said. "You know, part of it is semantics and technical economic analysis that gets done by a committee. You know, sometimes we don't know we were in a recession until we're out of it. So the unsatisfying answer is we don't really know right now. But one thing we do know is that the vibes are bad."
The business reporter said consumers and business owners alike were bracing for economic pain associated with the president's tariffs.
"We see a lot of economic data, and sometimes that feels very remote to everyday consumers," Morrow said. "Like, you know, you might still have a job, your coffee and bagel in the morning still costs the same. There aren't shortages, you're not seeing empty store shelves. So maybe you're thinking the media has completely blown this all out of proportion, and there's the reality is that the lagging effects of trade, it takes three or four weeks for a shipment to come from China to California, for instance, which is where a lot of our imports come from."
"So you're not seeing the effects quite yet, but it is happening," she added, "in part because the the steepest tariffs that the Trump administration has rolled out came out on April 2, and then there were heavier tariffs on April 9, and as we get into May, it's going to start showing up more on store shelves and consumers are going to start seeing more effects of it."