The risk of knocking over the dominoes…

Bruce O’Hara

by Bruce O’Hara

February 4, 2025

Ten days ago, George Gammon over at Rebel Capitalist presented some fascinating data on the growing tendency towards planet-wide recessions the world has seen over the past 50 years, using data gathered by Mike Maloney.

The chart above marks a red square for 26 major economies if there was a recession in the year shown. We can see the US and the majority of global economies went into recession in 1974, 1981, 1991, and 2001. In 2009, every country shown went into recession. In 2020, only Sweden – which didn’t do the COVID lockdowns – escaped the global recession.

One could argue perhaps that the US pulls the rest of the the world into rercession when its economy slows down, but the US went into recession in 1970 without creating a global slowdown. It seems far more likely that any spreading slowdown in global trade will gradually pull most of the countries in the world into economic contraction, regardless of where that slowdown begins.

Why do I think this is important? Donald Trump is threatening all and sundry with tariffs these days. Though he has backed off, temporarily, from 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada, the threat of tariffs still hangs over both countries. He has hit China with new tariffs, and is threatening the European Union with heavy new tariffs.

If all the countries Trump is threatening with tariffs had robust economies, it would be less of an issue. But they’re not.

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