President Trump inherited a “rip-roaring economy” that he is dragging into a “recession by design,” Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi told CNN.

Whiplash tariff wars and mass deportations of illegal migrants are grinding down consumer and business confidence, Zandi said Wednesday, Mediaite reports.

“The recession risks are uncomfortably high, and they’re rising,” Zandi said. “I think they’re less than 50-50, but it really does depend on the president. If he continues to push on the tariffs in early April” that could precipitate reciprocal tariffs by major trading partners of the U.S.

“If that actually happens and those tariffs stay in place for any length of time — three, four, five months — I think that’s enough to push the economy into recession,” Zandi said.

“This would be a really weird recession, right? I mean, it’s recession by design.”

If that were to happen, Zandi believes it’s possible the Trump administration will throw in the towel on tariffs, saying, “‘OK, enough already.’ But I don’t see that with confidence, and those recession risks are high.”

Signs of an inevitable recession, Zandi said, would be continued pessimism in consumer and business sentiment surveys; a drop in capital spending plans, construction, and manufacturing; and a continued pullback in the stock market — all of which are already continuing to crack.

“They’re all pulling back,” Zandi said. “You can see it, obviously, in the stock market, investor sentiment. The collective psyche is very fragile.

“At the end of the day, recession is a loss of faith,” Zandi continued. “[If] we lose faith that we’re going to be able to hold onto our job and businesses [are uncertain they] are going to be able to sell what they produce … that might be enough to push the collective psyche over the edge and push us into a recession.”