Creighton University economist Ernie Goss says ‘new year, same economy’ for the most part, but even slower than 2025.
He publishes a monthly survey of the Midwest economy that includes the Dakotas.
“What we’re seeing, at least according to manufacturing and supply managers, they’re getting concerned about the tariffs," Goss said. "Probably less than half support the tariffs, about 37.5 percent say they’re opposed to the tariffs.”
Goss said that, among other economic concerns, is reflected in the similar nationwide survey of manufactures.
“GDP is growing at a reasonable pace, certainly for the third quarter of 2025 and fourth quarter of 2025, yet job growth was not there," Goss said. "If you look at the (Bureau of Labor Statistics) numbers, if you take in the margin of error, somewhere between a loss of 70,000 jobs and a gain of 200,000 jobs. That’s a wide span of jobs, but nonetheless it’s clear the job market has weakened.”
Goss said the way tariff policy is being wielded in Washington creates inherent unease in the business community.
“If you’re thinking about expanding and selling abroad, it certainly has impact," Goss said. "You look at China. What happened there is Xi Jinping – he retaliated – and we saw that cut exports of agricultural and livestock to China by 80 to 90 percent, it depends on the state we survey.”
Meanwhile, metal investments, think gold, silver and copper, are up as the value of fiat, or hard, currencies are falling.
Goss said international actions are driving those prices up.
“We might be pulling out some of your gold fillings to be selling, because the prices have now broken above $4,400 (per ounce of gold) and silver above $80 (per ounce)," Goss said. "There’s going to be some fallout there and we’ll have to wait and see, but prices are up today, and they’ve been up this week. With term oil across the globe – well, more in Venezuela as we talk – that’s creating uncertainty and uncertainty likes gold.”
Goss said fallout from policy – most recently Venezuela – hits the economy in South Dakota and the rest of the region downstream.
“The drama does have impacts on the local market," Goss said. "That’s volatility and uncertainty. Markets don’t like uncertainty.”
This comes as statehouse lawmakers are considering Senate Bill 7, which would modify the tax rate on gold in South Dakota.
The current severance tax is four dollars per ounce of gold. If passed, SB 7 would change that to one percent of that gold’s market value.
He adds that other investments could also see the wind taken out of their sails in coming weeks.
“I expect other prices, for example the ‘Fantastic Seven’, the ‘Beautiful Seven’, however we want to refer to that to have some of the air taken out of that bubble, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing," Goss said.
The so-called "Magnificent Seven" are seven large, well-performing tech companies like Google’s parent company Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla.
With all this in mind, a question remains.
“We haven’t seen any, to any large extent, reshoring," Goss notes. "That is, bringing back to the US manufactures because of tariffs. There will be some of that, there’s little doubt the President is correct on that. The question is, how much?”
Goss said it looks like those returns will be less than the President promised and on a much longer timescale.
“I don’t think we’re ever going to bring baseball manufacturing back to the US, but we might expand medical equipment manufacturing in the US," Goss said. "We might see some automobile production coming back to the US, but again that’s a long-term proposition.”
Ultimately, Goss predicts despite months volatile financial policy, the President will keep his foot down on his current economic trends.
“He’s not taking his foot off the accelerator, and the economy is not taking its foot off the brakes," Goss said. "He’s like Xi Jinping in a sense that Xi Jinping is not running for office again, and President Trump’s not running for office again – but his Congress is facing an election in the fall of this year of course.”
Looking to 2026, Goss sees output growing for manufactures, but no meaningful growth in revenues. Further, he predicts electricity prices to rise and short-term interest rates to drop in the next year.