- US President Trump aimed to revive manufacturing and economic strength with tariffs and tax cuts
- Economist Kyla Scanlon calls the US economy a "casino economy" driven by speculation and risk
- Working-class Americans face losses as safety nets shrink amid corporate tax breaks and tariffs
US President Donald Trump promised to 'Make America Great Again' by bringing back manufacturing and rebuilding what the world's biggest economy once was—a booming trade, solid factories, and secure workers.
However, ever since he took office as the 47th US President, the world's top economists have not been able to hold back on critiquing the tariff buzz, lean government spending, and everything else that's become of the US economy—'A big gamble'. According to LA-based Gen Z author, podcaster, and economic commentator Kyla Scanlon, the US is now Trump's 'Casino Economy'—where everything is about gambling!
Scanlon is a financial content creator who recently wrote in The New York Times on how working-class Americans mostly stand to lose as the US economy is almost 'predatory' for them and largely defined by froth. She believes the rich now always has a greater chance of winning with Trump's tax cuts.
"Tariffs are being used like 'poker chips' and the stock market prices are now largely being driven by sentiment rather than fundamentals." As per Scanlon, the public sector has stepped back as a stabilizer, and the private sector has rushed in as a gambler, putting the economy under pressure.
For the US economy, the OECD forecasts a slowdown to nearly 1.8% growth in 2025, a significant drop from levels in 2024. S&P Global indicates that a "below-trend" growth will persist through the end of the year.
"What he has ushered in instead is a casino economy, built on speculation and risk. Across markets and policy, wagers on the future are being made with other people's money at a cost that could prove catastrophic," said Scanlon.
WHY EVERYTHING IS GAMBLING NOW
October 26, 2025
In today's New York Times piece, I wrote about how everything from AI investment, memecoins, tariffs, healthcare, debt-roulette apps have turned the US economy into a casino. pic.twitter.com/ihc6VCsyPpSpeculation is now the system in the US, according to her. Markets once processed narrative into information to find profit. Now narrative is profit. She explained that what was once confined to capital markets now runs through everyday life: Healthcare, housing, education, etc.
AdvertisementThe economic commentator said in her NYT column that along with the ongoing tariff deals, one easily will see gambling throughout the US economy — in markets, policy and how we talk about the future:
Tech giants spending billions on artificial intelligence data centers and the power grid to sustain them.
A government shutdown over Americans' ability to keep their health care.
The increasingly erratic treatment of the US dollar.
The rise of over 13 million memecoins
JPMorgan allowing institutional clients to use Bitcoin and Ether as loan collateral
Venture capital funding companies that let people “bet against their bills”
Bad loans from regional banks.
Trump's 'Casino Economy': How is it 'predatory' for working class?
Quite a few economists argue that Trump-led Republicans have shrunk the safety net that catches people when volatility catches up with them. They cut Medicaid and did not extend Affordable Care Act subsidies to fund further tax cuts. Social Security and Medicare are on the table for reform.
"This is the cruellest logic of the casino economy, stripping away health coverage from working-class Americans to give tax breaks to companies gambling on speculative ventures," said Scanlon. She added that lower food assistance is being done to fund capital gain options for investors playing with memecoins and thousands of federal workers are fired to “save” money while bleeding institutional knowledge and capacity.
BREAKING: At least 4,000 federal workers received layoff notices, a court filing shows, with the Treasury and Health departments seeing the largest cuts. https://t.co/QoQFH9qyPL
October 11, 2025"The math doesn't work. The morality doesn't either. In this economy, individuals bear the downside risk, while corporations and the wealthy collect the upside. It's a rigged game where the house — seemingly, the already rich — always wins," explained the Gen Z economic commentator.
Scanlon agreed that economies run on risk, growth and ambition. But, she added, "there's risk, and then there's reckless gambling". When safety nets are stripped away to help absorb losses if bets don't turn out, when trust is lost, excessive risk-taking stops becoming productive and morphs into something predatory, according to the financial content creator.
AdvertisementImpact on US economy
Experts note that the US government is gambling that blanket tariffs will restructure global trade in their favour, despite no historical precedent for the approach succeeding against piles of evidence suggesting it won't. The US dollar has been posting poor performance all year against other currencies.
The LA-based financial expert also highlighted that the economic system has inertia and that institutions do not collapse overnight. However, she devised that a 'nightmare scenario' for the US economy in the future could be when too many bets go bad simultaneously.
Some of these scenarios include an AI bubble-burst just as trade tensions escalate into a serious global trade war. The dollar faces a challenge from a coalition of nations tired of US economic unpredictability or AI triggers a sector-wide repricing. Tariff retaliation hits specific industries hard — agriculture, automotive, aerospace — creating regional economic pain, or a health crisis hits Medicaid-dependent regions particularly hard.
On this episode of the Everybody's Business podcast, @kylascan joins @svaneksmith and @chafkin to discuss the three economic indicators that might tell us where things are heading https://t.co/i51n7zR9iH pic.twitter.com/R3rnjuhCJT
October 24, 2025"Each crisis is manageable in isolation, but they compound. Market volatility becomes the norm. Consumer confidence wavers. Business investment pauses. We enter a prolonged period of economic anxiety, with low growth punctuated by frequent shocks," said Scanlon.
"The scary part? We wouldn't necessarily see a crisis coming because casinos are designed to keep us playing until suddenly we look down and realize all our chips are gone. Economic crises often appear suddenly, even when they've been building slowly," she wrote in NYT.
In a real casino, the math guarantees the house wins over time. She opines that we will likely see some winners. But we will likely see losers, too. And she believes there are likely to be many more Americans in that category. "Casinos run on illusion — the belief that the next hand will be different. But economies don't have to," Scanlon concluded.
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