The political conversation continued in Castleton this past Friday at noon with Castleton Indivisible. Business Professor Jody Condon and senior business major Aksel Stroem-Hansen, and star for the Castleton ski team, delivered a lecture that was less classroom discussion and more economic wake-up call.

The talk, titled Tariffs, Business Relations, and Impacts on the Stock Market, pulled no punches. Framed around the resurgence of tariffs under President Donald Trump, Condon and Stroem-Hansen broke down what those policies mean for average Americans and what they reveal about the state of the country’s economic identity. Spoiler: it’s not great.

One of the most striking moments came early, when Condon walked the room through a timeline tracking U.S. economic policy from Trump’s 2018 steel and aluminum tariffs through the 2020 COVID crash, and into the volatile recovery that followed. Market dips, retaliatory tariffs from trading partners, price hikes, and supply chain shocks were laid out in sequence – a play-by-play of how political decisions turned into real-world consequences.

At the heart of the lecture was a big, uncomfortable question: is the United States still the stable, reliable market it’s long been seen as? According to Condon and Stroem-Hansen, the answer is increasingly no. The U.S. brand has historically been backed by steady leadership, open markets, and the promise of opportunity, and on a global scale is losing credibility.

The presenters emphasized what they called a “triple threat” to U.S. economic confidence: stock market instability, bond market volatility, and a weakening dollar. All three, they argued, were downstream effects of erratic policy decisions, trade conflict, and a growing sense among investors that the U.S. is no longer the sure thing it once was.

A local case study made it personal. Barr Hill Gin, a Vermont distillery, lost a major Canadian export opportunity due to tariff backlash. “There are no winners in a trade war,” Stroem-Hansen read from the company’s public statement – a stark reminder that these economic shifts aren’t just abstract trends. They hit home.

During the Q&A, one audience member asked about the Federal Reserve: specifically, how the recent volatility might affect interest rates, and whether Trump could influence Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s decisions. Condon was clear: the Federal Reserve operates independently. Trump doesn’t have the power to fire Jerome Powell, and Powell has been clear in stating that they operate independently. “That’s by design.” Interest rates, she explained, respond to inflation, employment, and economic stability, not political preference.

Policies like tariffs are often branded as populist “America First” measures supposedly meant to help the middle class. But Condon and Stroem-Hansen made it clear: the real costs fall on working people, not CEOs. Small businesses, hourly workers, and students trying to enter the job market are the ones least equipped to ride out economic turbulence.

Philosophy Professor Brendan Lalor often reminds his students that democracy depends not just on participation, but on an informed and curious public. That idea has echoed through this “teaching the Present Moment” lecture series, a call to think critically about who benefits from our economic policies and who bears the cost.

By the end, one message stood out: economic strength isn’t just about GDP or Wall Street rebounds. It’s about trust. And right now, the U.S. is running low on it, both from global investors and from its own people.