Ron Johnson on a potential recession: ‘You have to act boldly’ 

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) weighed in on a potential recession due to the Trump administration’s economic policies, noting that “you have to act boldly” to clean up a mess. 

Johnson joined CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, where he was asked about the threat of a recession brought on by President Trump’s tariff agenda and the president insisting the country’s economic state will be “OK” in the long term. 

“I’m old enough to remember when Ronald Reagan took office and inflation was completely out of control, he and Paul Volcker had to take some pretty bold and swift action to tame inflation, that included a pretty severe recession. But that’s what it took, when you come into office and you are inheriting enormous messes across, across the spectrum,” Johnson said. 

Johnson criticized the Biden administration over border security, foreign wars and inflation in the U.S.

“It’s hard to clean up those enormous messes, so I appreciate that President Trump has acted boldly, swiftly, decisively to clean up some of these messes,” Johnson said. 

He acknowledged that cleaning up that mess is not always “going to be easy” and certain aspects of the plan may have to be reevaluated or reversed. 

“But you have to act boldly when you have that responsibility,” he said. 

Trump appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, where he weighed in on whether the U.S. will enter a recession. He said “anything can happen,” but he thinks the country will be fine in the long term after “a transition period.” 

The president, like Johnson, argued that the administration has inherited the Biden-era economy and placed blame on the past administration as recession worries continue to grow. 

“He fully understands one of the reasons he won the presidency is because of Joe Biden’s high inflation,” Johnson said of Trump. “So, he’s fully aware of that.”