'Disastrous': Economist goes to war with deep-red state governor over Trump performance

Gov. Mark Gordon and a Wyoming economist could not have more divergent views on how President Donald Trump’s tariffs will affect states, particularly the state of Wyoming.

“The Trump tariffs have kind of shuffled the deck, in a way, and I think it’s a great opportunity for Wyoming to be able to pick up the game,” Gordon told reporters this month.

But University of Wyoming Associate Professor of Economics Rob Godby told WyoFile: “There’s just no good way to spin the Trump administration’s economic policies in the short term. They’ve been disastrous, and they’re going to be disastrous.”

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Wyoming’s oil and gas industry, for example, generated more than $2.4 billion in state revenue in 2023 and supported nearly 59,000 direct and indirect jobs in the state. But U.S. oil prices have declined since Jan. 20, when Trump began his second term in the White House, slipping by about 20% to around $56 per barrel over the weekend.

“I would say that the biggest effect on our revenues is really the indirect effect that will be caused by world oil prices, which is really driving down [Wyoming] oil revenues, especially in the last month and a half,” Godby said. “We’re not quite seeing it yet in terms of reported numbers, but we know it’s going to hit us because these prices are well below what we expected.”

Potential retaliatory responses from U.S. trade partners will also inevitably impact Wyoming’s prolific soda ash industry. Soda ash is the state’s biggest foreign export, accounting for $1.3 billion of the state's $2 billion total exports in 2024. But China accounts for about 10% of those purchases, and China is Trump’s primary target in his tariff wars.

Losing 10% of its exports would already be a big short-term blow, but it could be detrimental in the long term if China invests in synthetic soda ash, potentially replacing Wyoming as a source permanently.

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States like Wyoming also heavily depend on a lucrative export/import relationship with Canda, which is also jeopardized at the president’s whim because the White House is the only government agency actively pursuing tariffs.

Still, Gordon said he believes the tariff and negotiations will motivate markets, claiming Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba is willing to work with the U.S. to “rebalance” things.

Godby said there’s nothing solid in a claim, however.

“Hope is not a strategy,” Godby said.

Read the full WyoFile report here.