Nevada legislators for weeks have waited like root-canal patients for the projections that were delivered at Thursday’s Economic Forum. The lawmakers anticipated pain, but no one knew just how much to expect.

What they heard through their groans and grimaces this week was what can playfully be described as good news and bad news. The good news? At this moment, things aren’t so bad. So far, there’s more chaos than blood loss.

The bad news? Thanks in very large part to President Donald Trump’s tariff terrorism and endless insults to our trading allies, Nevada’s gaming and tourism-driven economy is certain to get worse in the coming months. Some projections were darker than a Stephen King story with the state still clawing its way to economic normalcy in 2027.

Now that the state’s experts have put their best analysis on the public record, those who imagined Nevada might do more for its people — or even maintain the perennial status quo — are looking for something to numb the painful reality: $191 million less to spread around over two years and $160 million less revenue for the State Education Fund, as The Indy has reported.

With $350 million less to work with, legislative pet projects are being put to sleep. It’s once again time to start tightening belts and pulling up bootstraps. If the five private-sector experts on the forum panel and the slate of economists who addressed them erred on the conservative side, they can’t be blamed given the current tumultuous atmosphere.

But you don’t need an economics degree to know that it’s a bad thing when actual economists are projecting flagging job growth, a noticeable dip in sales taxes, and a 7 percent decline in gaming tax revenues.

Trump bankrupted his casinos, and now it looks like he’s trying to bankrupt ours. He threatens our best allies and trading partners —goodbye Vegas-loving Canadian tourists. The 51^st state, indeed.

Trade war with China? Goodbye, Asian high rollers.

If you think it’s bad news for the casinos, it’s worse news for Trump’s man in Carson City, Gov. Joe Lombardo.

Nevada continues to be saddled with the highest unemployment rate in the nation. As of April 18, we ranked 51^st. That doesn’t make us the 51^st state. It just means we’re below even the District of Columbia.

Speaking of jobs, Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation chief economist David Schmidt couldn’t muster much sunshine about the job market in the coming months. Although he noted that the state has more people unemployed for reasons other than job loss, he acknowledged, “We have more people looking, more people entering, but taking longer to find work … You’ve heard the duration of unemployment is increasing nationally. That is true for Nevada as well.”

Throughout the forum, the experts acknowledged the precarious uncertainty of attempting to project into such economic tumult. Schmidt used Nevada’s reliance on Chinese goods as an example.

“Nevada [has] relatively low exposure to tariffs in general [but] has the highest share of imports to the state that come from China of any state at 26.6 percent,” he said. But an exemption for consumer electronics could lessen the economic impact.

Schmidt added that “the one thing I think we do know is that uncertainty makes it harder for businesses to invest. And it does itself act as a slowdown on growth. As businesses kind of keep their powder dry and pull back from engagement and defer making those decisions until they know how they can invest, as businesses are doing that, as consumers are doing that, it’s that collective pull back in activity that does itself lead to typical recessions.”

Schmidt wasn’t the only economist framing a presentation in terms of recession. Moody’s Analytics senior economist Emily Mandel’s analysis pointed to slow growth in 2026-2027 and acknowledged the likelihood of a sizable dip in visitor volume. When an economist starts making comparisons to “previous recessions,” it’s not good news for legislators or Lombardo, whose current commercials touting his education plan have the feel of campaign ads.

At one point, forum member Linda Rosenthal described Mandel’s forecast as “quite a bit more dire,” one in which “a lot of negative possibilities are being baked in with a pretty extreme decline expected here.”

Mandel replied that when discretionary income is tight, as it was in previous recessions, casino play drops. There are fewer available dollars for vacations and nights at the tables.

The Economic Forum was pretty grim, but one unintentionally humorous moment came when it was explained that Mandel needed to present her dour analysis early because she had a flight to catch.

Given the precarious economic outlook for the state, I can only guess that many of Mandel’s colleagues wanted to join her on that plane out of town.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in New Lines, Time, Readers Digest, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Reuters and Desert Companion, among others.