2025’s economic bottom line, from tariffs to the K-shaped economy
Sorting out our topsy-turvy economy and looking ahead to 2026, Bankrate’s Mark Hamrick still says, “there are reasons to be optimistic.”
“Certainly a volatile, disruptive year, and unfortunately I think those characteristics are going to be very much with us in 2026,” he said.
Hamrick points to five major issues that made for a rough economic ride in 2025, many of which revolved around President Donald Trump’s policies and one of which rocked how other countries trade with the United States.
“Tariffs in April,” he said, “the backing down from the absolute highest level of tariffs, but not much.”
Those import duties were a factor for the holidays, with high import duties on China affecting prices on toys to electronics to fake Christmas trees.
Hamrick also points to Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” signed July Fourth, and the tax effects of which the public will feel going into the new year and beyond, and the 43-day government shutdown that idled federal workers until almost Thanksgiving. That will also be a headline going into 2026, as the stopgap spending bill that ended the longest shutdown in U.S. history is set to expire by Jan. 30.
But, there were two other issues from 2025 that Hamrick pointed to that will also linger into the new year.
“The continuation of affordability challenges that hit Americans where they live and in their everyday personal financial lives,” he said, which gave rise to an economic term that many of us had never heard before: The K-Shaped Economy.
“That’s related to affordability,” Hamrick said, “but also accumulation of wealth, or lack thereof.”
And that is a theme we may be hearing more of in 2026.