Markets tumbled again on Monday after President Donald Trump said he wouldn’t rule out an upcoming recession in the U.S., sending skittish investors into another sell-off fueled by whiplash over tariffs and overall economic uncertainty.

When asked if he expected a recession, Trump told Fox News on Sunday: “I hate to predict things like that. . . . There is a period of transition because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America.”

Later, when pressed further, Trump said, “All I know is this: We’re going to take in hundreds of millions of dollars in tariffs, and we’re going to become so rich you’re not going to know where to spend all that money.”

And so, this week starts off as last week ended, with market turmoil and even more discussion about tariffs. While across-the-board tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico are now delayed, 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports into the U.S. go in effect on Wednesday, which are aimed at China, but will also affect Canada, Brazil, and Mexico, where we get most of our steel. Many countries are promising to clap back with reciprocal tariffs, the costs of which will likely get passed on to American consumers.

A look at the numbers show all three major indexes fell in morning trading, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down almost 1%, the S&P 500 shedding 1.7%, and the Nasdaq shedding almost 3%. Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq dropped to their lowest levels since September 2024, according to CNBC.

Some of the biggest movers were tech stocks, with Palantir falling 7.5%, chipmaker Nvidia falling 5%, and Meta and Alphabet both losing 4% at the time of this writing. Elon Musk’s Tesla shares also plunged 8%. Not a pretty sight.

Adding insult to injury, HSBC downgraded U.S. equities, saying, “There are better opportunities elsewhere” and turning its eye toward stocks in Europe, citing the ongoing tariff debacle.

It’s unclear if we are heading into a recession, but what is clear is how to measure one. A recession is defined as two consecutive negative quarters of gross domestic product (the value of all the goods and services the U.S. produces).

But it can also be measured more broadly “as a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in production,” according the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)’s Business Cycle Dating Committee, which tracks recessions. It looks at factors like unemployment, industrial production, real income, personal consumption, and wholesale-retail sales to determine the depth and breadth of economic decline.

So far, the NBER has not declared a current recession in the U.S.

Some experts say they are more worried about inflation than a recession, and that while Americans worry about tariffs, that isn’t a great indicator of upcoming consumer spending. (Inflation measures how much prices are going up, while a recession measures a period of time when there is negative economic growth, according to Fidelity Investments.)

”Demand is showing some fraying around the edges, but it hasn’t accumulated to enough to be a meaningful risk of a downturn,” Vincent Reinhart, chief economist at BNY Investments told CNN. “Inflation is still a top priority.”

The Federal Reserve seems to also be more worried about inflation.

“Based on what we know today, given all the uncertainties around that, I do factor in some effects of tariffs now on inflation, on prices, because I think we will see some of those effects later this year,” New York Fed president John Williams said, as reported by CNN. Going forward, one big question will be if inflation worries gain enough steam that we see another rate cut.

Meanwhile, Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank, told CNBC on Monday, “I don’t think we will talk about a U.S. recession. The U.S economy is resilient, I would say, largely despite Donald Trump,” but was quick to call Trump an “agent of chaos and confusion.”

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