You don’t need to be psychic to be predicting an economic downturn of significant proportion in the very near future. Just take a look at the recent Texas State Fair. It had the lowest attendance since 2018 — when, by the way, Trump’s malfeasance cost the GOP the House. Why did the fair flop? Because everything was priced on the moon. And why is that? Let’s take a closer look.
James Talarico, the man with the spiritual Bernie-style politics I wrote about earlier this month, filmed a campaign commercial for his Senate bid capitalizing on the lowest attendance at the Texas State Fair since 2018. This is obviously a political advertisement and not investigative reporting, but it’s a very classic boots on the ground style ad where the data Talarico cites is correct and the proof is in the lack of foot traffic at the Texas State Fair. Texas lost millions in revenue because this major event fell flat because, well, everything is just too damn expensive.
Tariffs are ruining everything — including the Texas State Fair.$14 for fried oreos.$15 for a funnel cake chicken sandwich.$25 for a turkey leg.DC politicians are pricing Texans out of our own state fair.
— James Talarico (@jamestalarico.bsky.social) 2025-10-20T18:39:48.785Z
This is nuts and it’s not just Texas and the state fair. Here in Las Vegas different restaurants have raised their rates and I simply don’t go there or order delivery anymore. One Thai restaurant is charging $27 for a dish which is mostly sauce and contains four scallops and a handful of asparagus. I will not pay $6 apiece for four small scallops. That will not happen. Another Indian restaurant now wants $40 for mixed tandoori grill. It used to be $30. I paid it back in the day because there was enough for two meals. I just won’t pay $40, though. We all have our limits. Back to the Texas Fair.
Why, pray tell, is everything too damn expensive? Economics 101 entering the real world! Unfortunately for the MAGA economists, broad-based tariffs have yet again revealed themselves to be a tax on Americans, not the foreign countries exporting their products to us. In September, Texas State Fair officials confirmed a screenshot circulating on social media saying they will stop giving away free tickets to high school students citing “rising costs, low redemption rates, and increased safety concerns.” There are posts across the internet complaining about unexpectedly high prices at the Texas State Fair, and vendors report items like chocolate costing 71 percent more this year. When the Federal Reserve says they are worried about cutting interest rates because they see signs of inflation creeping back into the economy, these are the kinds of signs they see.
And why is something like chocolate up so much? Because cocoa trees don’t fucking grow here!!! This is why trade exists, like, as a prehistoric principle of mankind that the Republican Party fails to grok even when grok goes woke and tells them this. We can’t grow bananas either, so Trump’s tax on that to try to spur the budding American banana industry is like whacking yourself in the nuts with a hammer in hopes that Tinkerbell will show up and make it feel better. This is all beyond stupid. We do not have words in any form of the human language to convey what a colossal own goal Trump’s entire trade war is for the United States of America. […]
The vibecession as Kayla Scanlon famously coined it a few years ago is real, and it is being felt at lower incomes, who are more affected by tariffs as every hungover freshman in any economics 101 class could tell you by using basic addition, subtraction and division. The stock market and its wealth effect is responsible for a significant amount of consumer spending by the wealthiest Americans who own most stocks, but this economy only really works when every piston is firing. The Texas State Fair and charts like the above and rising auto defaults and statements from the Fed about inflationary concerns all point to a growing squeeze of people at lower incomes. The lesson of 2008 and The Big Short is that the giant economic conflagration is not caused by the stripper who owns five houses, but by the bankers securitizing her loans and selling them as something they aren’t. But as much as comparisons to 2008 are coded into our view of the economy, they are always pointless because in 2007, no one would have said Lehman Brothers would go under a year later, and the entire point of a crisis is it’s a surprise. What Trump is delivering to us so far does not look like 2008, it looks like the 1970s.
A big part of policymaking is ensuring that our society is set up to withstand any surprises or black swan events like, oh, I don’t know, AI being a bunch of hollow spending on data centers with trillions in bridge loans and a wave of demand that hasn’t arrived yet. The Splinter legend Hamilton Nolan wrote a good blog about the antifragility Trump is coding into everything right now, and how the economy is beginning to suffer similar structural problems to the other core parts of society connected to a government Trump has hollowed out. The Texas State Fair is a big economic weathervane—$83.1 million in operating revenues in 2024—and a big dip in attendance is telling us something. Is it the same story this entire year has told? Who’s to say, all we know is that the rubber is beginning to meet the road in Trump’s trade war as things like turkey legs cost more than double what they did two years ago, and the longer this goes on, the more economic wreckage it will cause. Trump even said so, as he just admitted that what is happening at places like the Texas State Fair “could stand.”
Not the economy that he promised, or that they voted for.
How long can Fox hide this?
I would be willing to eat Top Ramen and Kraft macaroni and cheese every day if this will cause people to finally wake up.