Dusting off an old economic term, stagflation from Marketplace.

I'm Sabri Benesho, in for David Brancaccio.

Surveys show economists believe the risk of recession has increased due to unstable economic policy, including tariffs.

Treasury Secretary Scott Besson said the economy might need a detox, and President Donald Trump over the weekend didn't allay any fears when he declined to rule out a recession.

Joining us to talk about that and more is Julia Coronado, founder and president of macro policy perspectives and a professor at the University of Texas, Austin.

Good morning, Julia.

Good morning.

Does the economy need to enter a period of pain before a period of

resurgence? Is that what's going on here? Well, I don't know that it needs to, but it looks like

it might, and it's a very interesting shift in message from the administration that a detox

sounds like a veiled word for a recession.

And certainly there has been a lot of data indicating that firms and consumers are losing confidence

because of all the sources of uncertainty tariffs and trade wars are one of them.

But there's a lot of interruptions in government contracts,

federal worker layoffs, immigration policy. There's a lot of sources of uncertainty and change in the

economy. Now, if we were to enter a period of recession, it would not be a normal one. The fear is

something called stagflation. Let's take a moment to

explain that one. What is it from a technical definition? Stagflation means you get high

inflation and low growth. There's no technical definition, but that's the idea. And the driver of that

would be a trade war, that you get tariffs and counter tariffs,

those drive up consumer prices, and that also drives down growth. The problem with that is we usually

look to the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates to help boost the economy if growth is stumbling.

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