WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump unexpectedly summoned reporters to the Oval Office on Thursday to present them with charts that he says show the U.S. economy is solid following a jobs report last week that raised red flags and led to the Republican firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Joining Trump to talk about the economy was Stephen Moore, a senior visiting fellow in economics at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and the co-author of the 2018 book “ Trumponomics.”
Flipping through a series of charts on an easel, Moore sought to elevate Trump’s performance as president and diminish the economic track record of former President Joe Biden. Trump stood next to Moore and interjected with approvals.
The moment in the Oval Office spoke to the president’s hopes to reset the narrative of the U.S. economy. While the stock market has been solid, job growth has turned sluggish and inflationary pressures have risen in the wake of Trump imposing a vast set of new tariffs, which are taxes on imports.
Moore said he phoned Trump because he put together some data that shows he was correct to dismiss Erika McEntarfer as the head of the BLS. He noted that’s because reports from the BLS had overestimated the number of jobs created during the last two years of Biden’s term by 1.5 million.
“I think they did it purposely,” said Trump, who has yet to offer statistical evidence backing his theory. Revisions are a standard component of jobs reports and tend to be larger during periods of economic disruption.
The economy has seldom conformed to the whims of any president, often presenting pictures that are far more mixed and nuanced than what can easily be sold to voters. Through the first seven months of this year, employers have added 597,000 jobs, down roughly 44% from the gains during the same period in 2024.
The July jobs report showed that just 73,000 jobs were added last month, while the May and June totals were revised downward by 258,000.
While Biden did face downward revisions on his job numbers, the economy added 2 million jobs in 2024 and 2.6 million in 2023.
The fundamental challenge in Biden’s economy was the jolt of inflation as the annual rate of the consumer price index hit a four-decade high in June 2022. That level of inflation left many households feeling as though groceries, gasoline, housing and other essentials were unaffordable, a sentiment that helped to return Trump to the White House in the 2024 election.
There are signs of inflation heating back up under Trump because of his tariffs. On Thursday, Goldman Sachs estimated that the upcoming inflation report for July will show that consumer prices rose 3% over the past 12 months, which would be up from a 2.3% reading in April.
How much sharpie did he use this time?
Why does he always have to present this stuff on big cardboard posters like a high school “Birds, they’re fucking everywhere” style science project.
He can’t read and has to have things shown and explained to him with large, colorful pictures.
Because he’s a fucking child.
Also he’s into child fucking.
BREAK OUT THAT SHARPIE MOTHERFUCKER!
Reminds me of George W. Bush defending his economy in September of 2008, stating on Sept. 20, 2008 “I say that the fundamentals of our nation’s economy are strong.” The same day, Treasury Secretary Paulson requested the U.S. Congress authorize a $700 billion fund to acquire toxic mortgages, telling Congress “If it doesn’t pass, then heaven help us all”. On October 2nd, stock market indices fell 4%, and between October 6-10, the DJIA fell 18%. Sure Donald, everything’s just rosy!
Honestly not sure what I want to see happen. It’s either we watch taxes shift the weight of the country onto the middle and lower classes more and the wealth gap keep drastically growing while people keep saying it’s fine, or people open their eyes and the market collapses and we can start to address it but people will be hurt during the collapse as well obviously. It’s hard to say you want a collapse, but long term it would help the population more.
I don’t think of it in terms of what I’d want to happen, but rather in terms of how the situation is likely to play out. That way I can position myself in such a way so as to minimize the harm I risk suffering. As it stands, the U.S. has been approaching a tipping point with respect to budget deficits and the national debt for some time. While there have long been right-wing budget hawks harping on the national debt, in reality it hasn’t been a serious issue. You can run a 2-3% budget deficit indefinitely, borrowing with the issuance of treasury bonds, so long as your economy is growing at a 3% rate. Your national debt grows, but your ability to service that debt also grows, so it will never become a crisis.
However, a number of events make the current situation unsustainable. First, the U.S. credit rating has been downgraded, making bond issuance a little more costly. Second, the insane tariff drama threatens to crush the U.S. economy, not only killing it’s growth, but causing it to contract. We have only just barely begun to feel the effects of the largest wave of taxation foisted upon the American public because many front-ran the tariffs, stocking up on goods. As those stocks are consumed, and replaced with goods costing 30-50% more, you can bet prices will rise dramatically. Likewise, deportation of your work force is also recipe for economic contraction. Population growth = economic growth, because every person added to the population consumes food, housing, clothing, entertainment, etc., and works to afford these necessities.
To illustrate with an example, imagine that you are a real estate developer looking to build a massive subdivision. Your lumber prices just went through the roof due to tariffs on Canadian lumber. Copper tubing and wiring - same. Structural steel, ditto. And to top it off, undocumented immigrants are as much a part of construction as they are of agriculture, so your workforce just evaporated and your labor costs will soar. Add in that housing market is softening and rolling over, in part due to high interest rates, and you can rest assured that pretty much no real estate project is going to pencil out. A similar situation is playing out in many other industries as well.
So, we have a shrinking economy, so the right-wing budget hawks in Congress prudently cut spending and raised revenue, right? Right? Ha ha, no. Trump’s Big Asinine Bill cut taxes on the rich and boosted spending, raising the budget deficit to unprecedented levels.
So we have a dramatically shrinking economy and massively growing spending, what could possibly go wrong? It’s like a household maxing our credit cards to pay it’s bills, each month taking out a new card to pay the interest on the old one. Eventually, you run out of people willing to lend money at a reasonable rate (or at all), leading to a default. However, because the U.S. is a country and the debt is denominated in it’s own currency, it can print money to service the debt and debase the currency. This means inflation, and given the scope of the problem and level of incompetence at the top, we’re talking about the potential for far more inflation than has been experienced in any American’s lifetime. Think Argentina or Zimbabwe. I believe that within 5 years we will see inflation in excess of 50% per year, and possibly greatly in excess of 50%. The coming financial crisis will make the 2008 financial crisis look quaint, and the debasement of the dollar will destroy it’s status as the world’s reserve currency, making any borrowing though the sale of bonds to foreign central banks impossible. This will impoverish the U.S. and destroy it’s soft power. Moreover, people will be furious, and just like Trump blames everything he doesn’t like on Biden, he’ll blame other countries and potentially rally people to war as a distraction. Just as the economic malaise of the Great Depression led to WWII, the economic fallout from The Greatest Depression^tm will likely lead to WWIII.
What should you do? To the extent you have any financial resources, buy hard assets, especially gold and other precious metals. If you have the risk tolerance, a 2x leveraged gold etf is worth looking into. If you’re a true gambler, I think we’re going to see a 1929-like stock market boom/bust, especially once Trump gets his lackey in charge of the fed. Best of luck.
To add to your construction example, the labor shortage and costs double down when it comes to insurance as well. Insurance can’t come down, nor stay the same if the cost of the buildings are going up, and the repair costs are going up. The market crash I agree is likely to happen at some point, but that’s not hard to see when the average Total investment of the market sits at 85% of the GDP of the country. It’s over 200% right now, signaling everything is way over valued.
You can want a collapse or not want a collapse. That doesn’t matter. It will collapse, sooner or later. The big one hasn’t even come yet. Shit like quantitative easing from 2008 and COVID interventions sacrificed actual productivity for asset prices to make it even worse. Eventually those inflated asset prices that drove away actual production will collapse once a problem shows up that’s to big for the Fed to print money to save the bubble since they’ve done it one too many times. Everyone’s terrified of Powell doing “quantitative unwinding” because it’s obvious it’d cause an asset crash already. And then the center will not hold. Then we see what the new stats quo will be.
Trumps very much in team asset inflation, and wants to blow the whole thing up faster but it’s going to happen regardless.
An economic system built on systemic fraud destroys itself inevitably. We are long past the point of our Wile E Coyote running off the cliff moment. If we look down we have to come to the rational conclusion nothing’s there but freefall.
Sure they could print billions and hand it out like candy to their billionaire buddies like they did in 08 but how many more steps can we go before gravity does what gravity does best?
An economic collapse is coming. Might be just what the US needs to rid ourselves of fanta fascists.
