More and more economists including those from Wall Street’s biggest banks have declared that the outbreak has already triggered a global recession. The debate is no longer if it will happen, but how long it will last and how deep it will run.

Efforts to slow the pace of infections has shut down swaths of economies around the globe and data from China -- the first to be hit by what is now a pandemic -- show a harder hit to its economy than originally projected.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. forecast in a note Sunday that the U.S. economy will shrink 5% in the second quarter after a 0% gain in gross domestic product growth in the first three months of the year.

The administration official said Trump’s advisers still hope a recession can be avoided -- that even if growth retreats in the second quarter, the economy will strongly rebound in the third.

Slow-Motion Response
But before this week, Trump’s response to the pandemic unfolded in slow motion. He initially said $2 billion would be enough to blunt the outbreak, and just last week he had advocated a business-as-usual approach. Less than two weeks ago, top Trump aides Larry Kudlow and Kellyanne Conway had described the virus as “contained” in the U.S.

At the time, fewer than 1,000 cases had been identified. On Tuesday, there had been more than 6,000 in the U.S. and 108 deaths, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University. The president now finds himself grappling with the greatest test of his competence and leadership since entering office, a crisis that risks the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans just months before voters decide whether to return him to the White House.

On Monday, after prospects for a swift end to the crisis had long since evaporated, Kudlow told reporters the administration was considering between $400 billion and $800 billion in stimulus. It wasn’t until the political tipsheet Politico Playbook flagged the $850 billion figure high in its Tuesday edition that official Washington seemed to realize Trump was willing to spend a staggering amount to beat the outbreak.

“The president has instructed his team to look very expansively on what we need to do and not be impeded by the potential price tag of what’s necessary here,” White House Legislative Director Eric Ueland said.

The news was welcome on Wall Street, offering a rare reprieve from a weeks-long sell-off in markets that has erased the bulk of gains during Trump’s presidency.

Trump denied Tuesday that any single development or projection had snapped him to attention, following earlier statements that labeled the outbreak “totally under control” and blamed his political enemies and the media for overstating the threat.