The Apocalyptic Shortage That Never Happened: Democrats’ Tariff Doomsday Narrative Imploded  

by Tyler Durden

Friday, Dec 26, 2025 – 04:00 PM

Remember earlier this year when President Trump was locked in a tit-for-tat trade war with China? Then, a broad coalition of Democrats, corporate media outlets, mainstream economists, and left-leaning think tanks warned that higher tariffs would spark pandemic-era supply-chain chaos and trigger price spikes for consumers. Two quarters later, those dire predictions have yet to materialize.

MSM propagandists sounded the apocalypse alarm:

• March: KOMO News: ‘It’s worse than COVID’: Point Roberts seeks state aid amid US-Canada tariff crisis
• April: NBC News: Product shortages and empty store shelves loom with falling shipments from China
• April: Fortune: Tariffs threaten a pharmaceuticals shortage, as 95% of ibuprofen comes from China
• April: CNBC: The trade war’s wave of retail shortages will hit U.S. consumers in stages.
• April: Axios: How Trump tariffs could cause a global recession
• April: Vox: America may be headed for this rare type of economic crisis
• April: CNN: Trump took the US economy to the brink of a crisis in just 100 days
• May: The Guardian: Trump’s tariffs: ‘It feels like Covid 2.0. So many things are getting disrupted’
• May: Business Insider: The worst is yet to come: Trump’s tariffs could mean even higher prices and empty shelves within weeks

Democratic Party and MSM’s supply-chain apocalypse alarm peaked in mid-April, then resurfaced in a smaller echo wave by August, according to Bloomberg data tracking mainstream media headline counts for the term “tariff.”

However, there is only so much economic doom the MSM can push in a propaganda campaign built on a shaky foundation, because none of the predictions above have come remotely true eight months later.

In fact, quite the opposite. The latest PCE data (September) shows no signs at all of the runaway tariff-driven costs that so many establishment economists proclaimed were imminent…

On the supply-chain front, Goldman analysts led by Jordan Alliger published the latest Supply Chain Congestion Index, showing that no bottlenecks have materialized since Trump decided on trade war 2.0 with China. The surge in congestion seen in 2021 and 2022 was driven by Covid-era disruptions, when governments shut down large parts of their economies.

As for the Democratic Party’s dire prediction of an “actively tanking economy” – have you seen the third-quarter print?

• Q3 GDP Unexpectedly Surges To 2 Year High On Soaring Health Insurance Spending

And it is no surprise that trust in the mainstream media has collapsed to record lows. For 16 years, ZeroHedge readers have understood that the MSM is little more than a propagandist and PR arm for whoever happens to be the highest bidder.