A funny thing happened on the way to the recession.

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

A funny thing happened on the way to the recession.

“What recession?” you ask.

Precisely.

When President Trump began rolling out tariffs on countries that have been ripping us off for decades, members of the expert class were beside themselves.

Talking heads with furrowed brows were on all the cable news channels. The legacy media rolled out a parade of “top economists” who, speaking with near robotic singularity of voice, warned of roaring inflation accompanied by a fast and deep recession.

The stock market tanked. Out came the “retirement experts” on the Sunday shows, warning that thanks to Trump’s recklessness, countless hundreds of thousands of beleaguered seniors would be forced to postpone retirement.

Opinion polls were quickly fielded, though not for the purpose of ascertaining public opinion. The goal was to seize the moment to shape public opinion in favor of Democrats, who were grasping at anything that might mitigate last year’s election disater.

So, we all waited for the sky to fall. Three months later, we’re still waiting.

The real world – rather than the faculty lounge, think tank-concocted world of our lavishly credentialed (but ironically, poorly educated) “experts” – asserted itself.

In this, the real world – where real people get up every day and do real work and pay real taxes and educate real children and buy real groceries and make real mortgage payments – personal income has unexpectedly risen.

Inflation unexpectedly has not.

The stock market, which dipped early, has fully recovered (and then some), hovering today at or near at record highs.

Strong job creation that wasn’t supposed to happen happened anyway. Manufacturing investment is taking off. And the federal treasury is taking in billions in windfall tariff revenue.

Meanwhile, nations around the world are making deals with Trump. That’s because they know what Trump knows. The United States is the largest consumer market in the world, and they dare not risk losing their share of it.

That dealmaking is serving to box in China, which has been the goal all along.

When this is all over the U.S. will be stronger. The middle class will be better off. And this country will be less dependent on a malfeasant communist regime for strategic goods and resources.

Oh, and the expert class will be even further discredited, which will yield a more discerning, less easily manipulated public.

Taken all around, you come to three realizations. First, the “Art of the Deal” may be more than just a book title. Donald Trump may actually know what he’s doing, and his skill at dealmaking may wind up as the most significant legacy of his presidency.

Second, the “experts” aren’t experts at all. They’re idealogues, the products of elite universities that long ago abandoned liberal education in favor of leftist indoctrination.

And third, though the country is doing well, the “experts” aren’t happy about it. They’re rooting for Donald Trump to fail. If the country fails, too, so be it. Call it regrettable but necessary collateral damage.

As I frequently say, you can’t dislike these people enough.