As recently as two months ago, the Nobel Prize-winning economist James Robinson (2024) warned that Donald Trump’s policies put the country at risk of a full-scale economic collapse. Fellow laureate Paul Krugman (2008) claimed the president had already engulfed the country in a full-scale crisis. Joseph Stiglitz (2001 maintained that “we will lose this trade war,” while Robert Shiller (2013) compared the chaos Trump’s policies will inevitably create to the conditions “that led to the election of Adolf Hitler” and the beginning of World War II.

Alas, the expert class may once again have overstepped. Much remains still up in the air with regard to Trump’s signature legislative and trade policies, but as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act makes progress in Congress and the White House has unveiled its second major trade deal, this time with Vietnam, investors have given their implicit stamp of approval. The S&P 500 reached an all-time high shortly before the New York Stock Exchange closed for the long weekend, while the 10-year Treasury, the benchmark bond that signifies investor confidence in the federal government’s fiscal health, lept at the news of June’s nonfarm payroll.