A dive into the current economic outlook, with real GDP growth slowing from the rapid 3.8 percent pace registered in 2018’s first half to a now-tepid 2.5 percent, points to at least two troublesome factors: President Trump’s ongoing trade wars and rising interest rates. Of the two, trade war policy is the most troublesome, and state data can help tell us why.

The Federal Reserve has been promising interest rate increases for more than a year, but trade war policy decisions are fluid and harder to gauge; there is no coherent program that identifies when, why, and with whom trade wars will start and stop. Trump seems to prefer taking a more chaotic approach when negotiating with trade partners.

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