The latest message from the data on the U.S. economy is simple: so far, so good, until further notice.

The labor market remained in a healthy state of balance as America entered a global trade war in April. U.S. employers added 177,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported on Friday. And the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.2 percent.

Both numbers were based on surveys taken in the immediate wake of the Trump administration’s move in early April to institute the highest level of tariffs on imports since the 1930s, although some of those levies have been paused for 90 days. The payroll gains extended the streak of U.S. job growth to 52 months.

Data released earlier this week showed that the U.S. economy contracted in the first three months of the year. But that was largely a result of a surge in imports as firms and households bought goods to try to get ahead of the tariffs. The trajectory of trade and consumer spending going forward remains unclear.

The picture of a steady job market, even if slightly backward looking, was reassuring for investors, who have been parsing through economic data for signs of a trade-induced deterioration. The S&P 500 rallied after the release and has now erased all its losses from early April.

“What we can take away from today is that the U.S. economy has entered the trade war on strong footing,” said Rebecca Patterson, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former chief investment strategist at Bridgewater Associates. “But the longer tariffs are in place and the higher the tariff levels are, the greater the risk that this optimism quickly fades.”

The vast majority of analysts say the eventual effect of Mr. Trump’s high tariffs on the labor market will be fully felt only in the weeks and months to come. Still, the early impact is reverberating through currency markets, global freight patterns and corporate business plans.

Ocean container bookings from China to the United States have dropped 60 percent since early April. Several large, publicly traded companies — General Motors, Delta Air Lines and UPS, among them — have pulled their forecasts for rest of the year — something that has not happened at this scale since the pandemic shock of March 2020.

Many businesses reliant on shipments from China have halted inbound orders. Import taxes on Chinese goods, which are set at a minimum of 145 percent, are so high that in many cases the import taxes are effectively a trade embargo.

The U.S. economy is more oriented than ever around services, which constitute about 70 percent of U.S. commercial activity. Yet goods purchases still make up a major chunk of household spending, and more than 40 percent of U.S. manufacturers rely on imported parts or finished goods.

Consumer sentiment has plunged in the past few months. And forecasters at major banks have dialed up the risk of recession and higher inflation this year.

The early rollout of other Trump administration policies — including the slashing of the federal civil service and of immigration inflows — will also be felt throughout the rest of the year. Federal government employment declined by 9,000 in April and is down by 26,000 since January — not enough to pull down overall employment. But once many of these workers run out of severance, they may find themselves as job seekers in a much weaker job market.

Lower immigration will reduce labor supply and competition for jobs, which may put some downward pressure on the unemployment rate. But it may also limit job growth, especially in industries that continue to report labor shortages like care work and construction work.

Average hourly earnings growth for U.S. workers, which is up 3.8 percent over the past year, has kept up a solid pace since overtaking inflation in 2023. But a broad range of households continue to feel squeezed by the increased cost of living in recent years.

Tariffs, if kept in place, may worsen the strain.

In response to investor expectations of a trade-induced slowdown, the global price of oil has fallen. And that, in turn, has led to cheaper gasoline. But several calculations by nonpartisan institutions indicate that President Trump’s tariffs — which are essentially taxes on domestic importers — could costs American families thousands of dollars annually.

Adidas said this week that steeper tariffs would eventually lead to higher-priced sneakers and sportswear for U.S. customers. Executives at Procter & Gamble, which makes products like Bounty paper towels and Tide detergent, said last week that the company would most likely increase prices for some products to deal with the effects of higher tariffs. And officials at Hasbro recently said the toymaker would “have to raise prices.”

The Trump administration’s elimination of a loophole that allowed items worth $800 or less from China to enter the United States without import fees may lead to the most immediately visible impact for customers doing summer shopping online.

There are fears that inflation, which is currently a tame 2.4 percent on a yearly basis, may rise again because of the trade war, even as growth slows. That could put the Federal Reserve, which is responsible for preserving employment and managing inflation, in a tricky position. If the labor market slows and prices rise, the Fed may find its two goals in tension.

These fears and gyrations are a major shift from the state of play in February, when much of Wall Street and top business leaders in Corporate America expected interest rate cuts, tax cuts, deregulation and more precisely calculated tariffs to extend the bull market that America has been experiencing in the past three years.

For businesses looking to adapt to whatever this new unfolding reality may bring, “forecasting the degree of deterioration requires both humility and agility,” said Daleep Singh, head of global macroeconomic research at PIMCO, and a deputy national security adviser during the Biden administration. “The list of uncertainties is long and growing.”

At the moment, the business community is hanging on every word from top Trump officials, who have been openly hinting that the White House is nearing a “framework” for new trade deals with different nations, though they have not yet announced any actual deals.

Most executives expect that, as trade negotiations go on, Mr. Trump “will continue to pivot and declare victories in order to truncate the worst outcomes,” Mr. Singh said. “But the reversals may be too late.”

In the same way that a pullback on trade has lagged effects, the potential resuscitation of more normal relations may also take several months to be felt — with a major slowdown of investment and hiring by U.S. businesses in the meantime.

And there is little guarantee that America will preserve or improve upon previous trade arrangements. European, Asian and Latin American allies of the United States are already in talks to create trade lines less subject to the volatility of American hegemony.

Nevertheless, the U.S. dollar remains the most dominant currency in world trade, and the spending power of American consumers is still unmatched. And those starting points do offer the Trump administration substantial buffers as officials jockey to reshape the global order.

U.S. company balance sheets are healthy overall. And U.S. households are also in historically solid shape overall, despite disparities. Two-thirds of U.S. households are homeowners, and most of them still have relatively low-rate, fixed mortgages. Credit card companies, such as Visa, are reporting that despite the negative national mood, consumers continue to spend in seemingly confident fashion as summer beckons.

That has left some analysts skeptical that the economy is anywhere near recession.

“If all the China tariffs remain in place, we may start hearing signs of stress in some impacted pockets of the economy by Memorial Day, but even that likely seems too soon,” says Peter Williams, managing director of macroeconomic research at 22V Research, an investment strategy and quantitative analysis firm.

The threat, of course, is that those pockets of weakness may metastasize.

Alan Bass and his family run a trade-exposed business, Stevens International, a wholesale distributor based in Magnolia, N.J., serving over 1,000 hobby and game shops.

“What we’re doing is we’re bringing things in from around the world that are not readily available in the U.S., and then offering them to retailers and consumers,” Mr. Bass, 35, said.

They carry more than 40,000 items — toys, paints, arts and crafts supplies and niche plastic model kits — and most of their 300 or so suppliers are from abroad, many of them from China.

The sky-high tariffs are such a shock to their business that they have halted all orders from China and paused hiring. Mr. Bass plans on placing recent orders, currently out at sea, in “bonded” warehouses — places where importers pay a fee to have their shipped goods temporarily stored onshore without having to pay customs duties.

His broader plan, and hope, is that the trade war blows over by the end of summer.

“A good chunk of who we buy from are just foreign companies whose products are not available here,” Mr. Bass said. “It’s not someone who has outsourced their work. It’s just someone that’s not an American company.”

Madeleine Ngo contributed reporting.

As trade tensions flared between the world’s largest economies, communication between the United States and China has been so shaky that the two superpowers cannot even agree on whether they are talking at all.

At a White House economic briefing this week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent demurred multiple times when pressed about President Trump’s recent claim that President Xi Jinping of China had called him. Although top economic officials might usually be aware of such high-level talks, Mr. Bessent insisted that he was not logging the president’s calls.

“I have a lot of jobs around the White House; running the switchboard isn’t one of them,” Mr. Bessent joked.

But the apparent silence between the United States and China is a serious matter for the global economy.

Markets are fixated on the mystery of whether back-channel discussions are taking place. Although the two countries have not severed all ties, it does seem that they have gone dark when it comes to conversations about tariffs.

“China and the U.S. have not held consultations or negotiations on the issue of tariffs,” Guo Jiakun, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, said at a news conference last Friday. “The United States should not confuse the public.”

However, China’s Commerce Ministry said this Friday that it was now considering holding talks with the Trump administration after repeated attempts by senior U.S. officials to start negotiations. White House and Treasury Department officials did not respond to requests for comment about whether such outreach had occurred.

The standoff over when and whether Washington and Beijing will hold economic talks comes as the Trump administration is scrambling to reach trade deals with dozens of countries that could soon face high tariffs. On April 2, Mr. Trump imposed what he calls “reciprocal” tariffs on countries that he believes have unfair trade and other economic barriers. Those levies, which sent global financial markets plunging, were paused for 90 days to give countries time to reach agreements with the United States.

China, which reached a largely unfulfilled trade pact with Mr. Trump during his first term, has indicated that it has little interest in talking about a new agreement until the United States rolls back what it views as a barrage of aggressive and unfair trade measures.

Mr. Trump increased tariffs on Chinese imports to a minimum of 145 percent last month, in a bid to force China into trade negotiations. Chinese officials responded by issuing their own tariffs on American products and clamping down on exports to the United States of minerals and magnets that are necessary for many industries.

The economic toll of the tit for tat is starting to become clear. The International Monetary Fund last month lowered its growth outlook for both countries and the world, warning that the tariffs had made a downturn more likely. Government data released this week showed Chinese factory activity slowing in April and first-quarter growth in the United States weakening.

During a cabinet meeting on Wednesday at the White House, Mr. Trump acknowledged that children in the United States may wind up with fewer dolls that cost more. But he insisted that he would continue to push for a “fair deal” with China, which he described as the “leading candidate for the chief ripper-offer.”

The Trump administration is focused on trade deals with about 18 of America’s most important trading partners that are subject to the reciprocal tariffs. Mr. Bessent indicated that talks with China would operate on a separate track from the other negotiations.

The Treasury secretary is expected to take the lead on the China negotiations while Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, oversees most of the other talks. However, Mr. Trump has not formally appointed or authorized a U.S. official to negotiate on his behalf with China, leaving Chinese officials to believe that the Trump administration is not ready or serious about trade talks.

Mr. Bessent, who had an introductory call with his Chinese counterpart in February, said that he held informal talks with Chinese officials over issues such as financial stability during the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank last week. He said that they spoke about more “traditional things” but did not say that trade was discussed. The Treasury Department did not issue a summary of any meetings with Chinese officials.

In an interview with Fox News this week, Jamieson Greer, the United States trade representative, said that he met virtually for over an hour with his Chinese counterpart before April 2 but that there had been no talks since Mr. Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs.

Mr. Trump has suggested that Mr. Xi should call him to begin the talks personally, noting their strong personal relationship. But that is not how China typically handles important economic matters. The United States and China traditionally work out their economic differences through a structured dialogue with formal meetings and working groups led by a top economic official from each country.

“This very personalistic approach by President Trump, who wants to negotiate directly with President Xi, doesn’t match with the Chinese system at all,” said Craig Allen, a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis. “In the Chinese system, these things are carefully negotiated in advance, they go up multiple channels and it is highly controlled and scripted, and when it gets to the leader stage it is highly choreographed.”

Mr. Allen, who until recently was the president of the U.S.-China Business Council, suggested that China was most likely mindful of the acrimonious meeting that Mr. Trump had with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in February and that Mr. Xi would be wary of a situation that could lead to a public confrontation with Mr. Trump.

During the Biden administration, Treasury Department officials worked with China to create economic and financial working groups of midlevel staff members that were intended to prevent tensions over tariffs and export controls from spiraling out of control. Those lines of communication do not appear to be in use in the Trump administration, which tends to view them as a waste of time.

“That is exactly the kind of thing that these groups can help do — help make sure that the policy you deploy is well tailored to achieve the objective and communicates to the other side what you’re trying to achieve before it’s too late and you instead have to react to potentially unintended consequences or a message that was not intended to be transmitted,” said Brent Neiman, a University of Chicago professor who was the Treasury’s deputy under secretary for international finance during the Biden administration.

During Mr. Trump’s first term, the president initially assigned the Treasury secretary at the time, Steven T. Mnuchin, to lead trade delegations to China. He later appointed Robert E. Lighthizer, his trade representative, who was viewed as more hawkish, to oversee the talks.

Veterans of that trade war believe the current deadlock could be more protracted because the tariffs are higher and both sides believe they are winning. If U.S. growth continues to slow while prices start to rise, it could add to the urgency for Mr. Trump to get real talks with China going.

“I think at some point we have to give them a graceful off ramp,” said Wilbur Ross, who served as Mr. Trump’s commerce secretary during his first term. “Whether that is somebody from our side calling them first or whether it’s simply appointing who will be our main representative — it may be at some point we need to make a symbolic gesture.

Michael Pillsbury, a top China adviser to Mr. Trump during his first term, said Beijing was most likely waiting to see what the deals that the Trump administration reaches with other nations such as India and Japan look like before engaging directly.

“They don’t want to start the formal talks because they want to know the bottom line from others first,” said Mr. Pillsbury, who speaks to U.S. and Chinese officials.

He noted that the trade fight has become a major point of national pride for China and that it believes that Mr. Trump’s demands — which Beijing does not fully grasp — will soften as American markets gyrate and midterm elections in the United States draw closer.

“Delay is very much in their interest, and a speedy deal is very much in Trump’s interest,” Mr. Pillsbury said.

A solid labor market has for months given the Federal Reserve comfort that it could hold off on interest rate cuts until it had more clarity about how President Trump’s policies would impact the economy. New data released on Friday reinforced that patient approach.

Officials at the central bank are widely expected to keep interest rates steady when they announce their next decision on May 7. After lowering interest rates by a percentage point last year, the Fed has since January opted against making additional reductions. That has left interest rates at a range of 4.25 percent to 4.5 percent.

Until this point, officials have felt little urgency to lower interest rates because the economy so far has stayed on solid footing. Mr. Trump’s attempts to reset global trade relations through steep tariffs now risk upending that.

Despite the president’s decision in April to temporarily pause more stringent levies from taking effect on nearly all of the country’s trading partners, businesses have struggled to navigate the uncertainty. Many have shelved big investments and slowed hiring, and some are already raising prices. Surveys suggest that consumers also have turned much more downbeat about the outlook, fueling concern that this pessimism will eventually translate to less spending.

The fear is that consumers will cut back so aggressively that businesses will be forced to lay off workers, worsening the economic slowdown. Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the central bank, has warned that in addition to denting growth, tariffs of the nature Mr. Trump is pursuing also risk stoking inflation.

That combination risks putting the Fed in a bind and further in the cross hairs of Mr. Trump. The president has in recent weeks stepped up his attacks on Mr. Powell, railing on the Fed chair to lower interest rates. On Friday, he again renewed that pressures, writing in a social media post: “NO INFLATION, THE FED SHOULD LOWER ITS RATE!!!”

The central bank is responsible for fostering low, stable inflation as well as a healthy labor market. Officials are now having to game out what they would do if their goals for the economy come into tension with one another.

The latest jobs report, which showed better-than-expected monthly payrolls growth and a steady unemployment rate, is welcome news for officials. It follows inflation data earlier this week that confirmed that in March, price pressures stayed somewhat subdued even as it remained above the Fed’s 2 percent target.

Officials are now debating whether the forthcoming surge in consumer prices will just be a temporary adjustment that fades over time, or if it will lead to persistently higher inflation.

Having just grappled with surging inflation in the aftermath of the pandemic, the Fed has stressed the importance of ensuring that tariff-related price pressures do not mushroom into a bigger problem. Last month, Mr. Powell said that containing inflation was crucial to fostering a healthy labor market.

“Without price stability, we cannot achieve the long periods of strong labor market conditions that benefit all Americans,” he said at an event at the Economic Club of Chicago.

That emphasis suggests there is a high bar for the Fed to restart interest rate cuts. Officials will need to see clear evidence that the economy is weakening before taking action, something that could take time.

Christopher J. Waller, a governor, said in a recent interview that he did not expect tariffs to impact the economy in a significant way before July, suggesting no near-term cuts.

Preston Mui, a senior economist at research and advocacy group Employ America, said he expects the labor market to gradually slow over the next couple of months rather than sharply collapse.

“When it gets sharp is when you have these big spikes in layoffs,” he said. That will depend on what Mr. Trump does with tariffs. If the president reverses course by the self-imposed 90-day deadline in early July, the labor market may avoid a more painful hit. If tariffs remain in place, or the uncertainty around trade policy lingers, the damage could start to mount.

After Friday’s report, traders in federal funds futures markets scaled back their expectations for interest rate cuts from the central bank this year. They see much lower odds of a June reduction but continue to forecast a quarter-point cut in July. Over the course of the year, they see the Fed cutting at least three times.