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US stock futures drop after Trump says he won’t rule out a recession

  • CNN
  • March 10, 2025
New York

CNN

 — 

US stock futures fell Monday after President Donald Trump said the US economy would see "a period of transition" and refused to rule out a recession, in an interview that aired Sunday.

When asked on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo" if he was expecting a recession this year, Trump said "I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition because what we're doing is very big."

Futures tied to the Dow were lower by 478 points or 1.2% Monday morning. S&P 500 futures fell by 1.37% and Nasdaq futures were down 1.6%.

Stocks have been hammered so far this month amid uncertainty around Trump's on-again, off-again tariff policy.

"The talk of tariffs is, in a lot of ways, worse than the implementation of them," said David Bahnsen, chief investment officer at the Bahnsen Group. "The tariff talk, reversal, speculation, and chaos only fosters uncertainty."

"I do not believe the administration knows how the tariff situation will play out, but if I were a betting man I would say that it will persist long enough to do damage to economic activity for at least a quarter or two, and ultimately result in a deal with different countries that make everyone wonder why we went through all the fuss," he said in a note Monday.

And cracks are forming elsewhere: Layoffs are mounting, hiring is slowing, consumer confidence is eroding and inflation is picking up.

A recession is commonly defined by two consecutive negative quarters of gross domestic product growth. The National Bureau of Economic Research's Business Cycle Dating Committee, the official arbiters, says a recession "involves a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months."

This is a developing story and will be updated.