Partly this is a deliberate ploy from the administration to “flood the zone,” a phrase former political adviser Steve Bannon borrowed from the sports field. The strategy is to overwhelm the media and what opposition there is from the Democrats through a tidal wave of moves that make it nigh-on impossible to respond to, well, everything, everywhere, all at once.

That explains all those executive orders covering everything from the “war on woke” to “Maintaining Acceptable Water Pressure in Showerheads,” the latter presumably an attempt to make America’s showers great again. But it is not just that. There truly seems to be a lot going on nowadays, whether it is the election of a new pontiff, the on-off application of tariffs, hostage exchanges, and war (and ceasefires, potential or otherwise) in the Middle East, Ukraine, and Kashmir.

Somewhere buried in this newsnami is Hungary’s economy and Viktor Orbán’s relationship with the President. While the government is quick to welcome each attempt at negotiating a ceasefire as reflective of its peace policy, it seems less keen to talk about the economic whirlwind we find ourselves in. However close Budapest and Washington might be, trade negotiations within the EU are a matter for the European Commission, not the member states. That means Hungary cannot carve out a tariff discount for itself; it can only get whatever the European Union can achieve as a bloc. That’s bad news at a time when the Hungarian economy is not exactly, as they say, going like gangbusters.

Doubtless, the government will blame the sluggish world economy, more specifically anemic growth in Germany, this country’s largest trade partner. It will probably also throw into the mix the destabilizing factor of a three-year war in the region. Those are, undoubtedly, contributing factors. But that is equally true across Europe. As our Macroscope report on page three makes clear, Hungary’s Q1 GDP figures didn’t just disappoint, they were the worst in the EU at the time of writing (some countries are still to report, but that won’t suddenly make Hungary’s figures markedly better once submitted). Gross domestic product stagnated according to the raw data, and was 0.4% lower according to seasonally- and calendar-adjusted data in Q1 2025 than in Q1 2024. Compared to Q4 2024, the economic performance was down by 0.2.

The government predicated the 2025 budget on economic growth of 3.4%. Only a month ago, the Ministry for National Economy lowered that to 2.5%. So far, it hasn’t modified its expectations in light of the fresh data, though it has said it won’t abandon its plan “to achieve the highest possible economic growth, and the economic policy programs for 2025 and 2026 will continue to set this ambitious goal.” It doesn’t have much of a hand to play, and it isn’t apparent how the much vaunted trans-Atlantic friendship can help it in a world where tariffs go as quickly as they come, and it becomes increasingly hard to plan or prepare. If anyone does have an answer, please share it. One of the analysts we spoke to said he had thought growth would be less than 2%; now he says whether the figure will even start with one is questionable.

Robin Marshall

Editor-in-chief

This editorial was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of May 16, 2025.