CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Two pieces of bad news hitting the markets Wednesday morning lead University of Virginia economist Ed Burton to believe we are now slipping into recession. Burton, who serves as a NewsRadio WINA economic analyst told Morning News his concerns are over the ADP workforce numbers showing job creation coming in about half of what they had been forecasting, and they also revised the previous month’s down. The biggest fall-off is in the service industries, which Burton says is our major export sector. Burton says it’s a double whammy that we’ll not only be paying higher prices, but our exports will probably be falling.

The second indicator Burton points out is the Commerce Dept’s 1st-quarter GDP. Instead of an already forecast 0.4-percent increase, it came in a -0.3-percent. Burton says it’s too early to say definitively, but everything he sees “points to a much slower economy, I think a recession is on its way”.

He says, “even if the President reverses all the tariffs, I think some significant damage has already been done and is not really reversible”.

“He needs to walk away from this and resume international trade and compensate the losers if necessary or perhaps subsidize the manufacturing industries that he wants to see.”

Listen to Burton’s complete thoughts on WINA’s Morning News below.