Breaking news: The US economy’s fine. More or less.

That was the message from preliminary PMIs released on Thursday. Donald Trump’s decision to pause tariffs on China likely bolstered business moods, which were nevertheless described as “subdued.”

The S&P Global services sector gauge for the US printed 52.3 in the flash read for May, easily ahead of the 51 consensus and up from 50.8 in April.

The manufacturing gauge likewise showed 52.3, a big beat. Consensus expected a contraction-territory reading.

The problem’s the same as it is with every other “Trump 2.0”-era macro readout: You don’t want to create a situation where the data bounces around from month to month depending almost entirely on whether the tariffs are “paused” or not. That makes it seem as though the world’s largest economy’s in thrall to the moody whims of a petulant child.

And do note: Even during stretches when trade tensions are dialed down, the prospect that the temperature will rise again imminently casts a pall. As the color accompanying Thursday’s release noted, there are still “ongoing concerns over the detrimental impact of tariffs on demand, supply chains and prices.”

Export orders, S&P Global went on, are still declining, supply chains are snarled and “prices charged for goods and services surged to an extent not seen since August 2022, overwhelming linked to tariffs.”

That latter assessment just underscores the inescapable reality of what, administration apologists aside, is an objectively suboptimal situation.

Even if there’s merit to Trump’s approach, it’s hopelessly anachronistic. Let me put it this way. I despise text messaging, and I think we’d all be far better off without smart phones. But if I were in a position to roll back smart phone usage, and I tried, it wouldn’t work and the unintended, adverse consequences would pile to the heavens.

Speaking of piling to the heavens, S&P Global’s Chris Williamson noted that “concerns over tariff-related supply shortages and price rises led to the largest accumulation of input inventories recorded since survey data were first available 18 years ago.”

Some of the forward-looking measures in the release improved, and order books firmed up. The employment gauges suggested payrolls were trimmed, but not dramatically. Again: This was a decent readout, all things considered.

And yet, the bottom line’s unavoidable, as bottom lines tend to be. The merits of Trump’s trade policies are almost irrelevant given how integrated and globalized the world is. The harder he pushes the envelope, the worse the fallout’s going to be, and that’ll mean constant policy reversals to contain the damage.

We’ve already seen that, and we’re going to keep seeing it. Because he’ll never concede the point, and neither will the people carrying his water.