WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — The smooth economy that Donald Trump was poised to inherit suddenly looks a bit rockier — with critics saying the president-elect is contributing to the uncertainty.

The Dow Jones stock index essentially ended Thursday flat after having posted 10 days of losses. The Federal Reserve now sees inflation as staying stubbornly elevated as it has become cautious about further interest rate cuts planned for next year.

On Wednesday, Trump blew up a bipartisan budget deal, which means the government could shut down after midnight Saturday. He then promoted a deal reached with Republicans on Thursday that Democratic lawmakers and President Joe Biden see as unacceptable. It failed to get the two-thirds threshold needed for House passage. This comes on top of a spate of tariff threats by Trump that the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday would raise prices and hurt growth without raising enough revenues to cover the rest of his planned tax cuts.

As Trump prepares for a second term in the White House, his actions to undo a deal and replace it in under 24 hours test the proposition that markets — a favored Trump barometer of success — will accept his mix of uncertainty and reality TV drama.

But from the vantage of Trump world, the economy was already a mess. That’s because of inflation, which is currently 2.7%, and public dissatisfaction with Biden.

“On day one, President Trump will get to work to launch the largest deregulatory agenda in history, cut taxes, and expedite permitting for drilling and fracking to lower energy costs and inflation for all Americans,” said Karoline Leavitt, the transition spokeswoman and incoming press secretary.

The past few days are a reminder that the economic growth in the Republican’s first term was often accompanied by turmoil. It remains to be seen if voters already exhausted by inflation are ready for another round of blame games and uncertainty that the past few days have foreshadowed.

Trump vowed on social media Wednesday to “fight ’till the end” unless Democrats agreed to lift the debt ceiling as a condition for the short-term funding to keep the federal government open. He and his billionaire friend and adviser Elon Musk also promised to fund challengers in the 2026 primary elections to any Republican lawmaker who opposed the president-elect.

His social media postings came after Musk blasted the bipartisan package reached by House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to fund the government through March 14. When the government last had a partial shutdown for five weeks starting at the end of 2018, the CBO estimated it cut economic growth by $3 billion, a small but symbolic sum.

By Thursday, Trump was claiming on social media that a new deal reached among Republicans was a “SUCCESS” because it would push the debt ceiling out until January 30, 2027. He insisted that Democrats “do what is best for Country,” but the White House and leading Democratic lawmakers came out against the proposal.