That's the bingo card. The economy runs on expectations.

I've been thinking about the recent layoffs impacting government. If 1% of the workforce is laid off at once for no good reason, are the impact restricted to 1% of economy? I'd assume no, because 90% of the other people would start saving just in case.

To not have that situation, you would need to be convincing that the impact are only restricted to the people that are laid off, but that isn't happening because they weren't laid off with an convincing cause. So now everyone is cowering because this suddenly looks like something that could happen to them.

That's the real problem. We've seen this happen in the rare earths industry over and over since about 1990, with wild swings in prices and profits. When demand and supply have a lot of inertia, minor changes in either cause big change in prices.

A US startup is preparing to mine titanium in Tennessee. Three US startups in different states want to start up rare earth mines. They all need some assurance of not being drastically undercut on price, or some way to hedge that.

If we're going to have protective tariffs, they should be at the consumer product end, not the raw materials end. Smartphones, not steel.