The Trump Economy

Another reason that this is Trump’s economy.

The politicization of government economic institutions.

By firing the director of the BLS and claiming that the jobs data was falsified. By trying to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook and packing the federal reserve board of governors because they won’t drop interest rates like he wants.

Trump’s lies and chaotic behavior destroy confidence in our government and economy on top of the destabilizing tariffs and foreign policy.

As tiny noted here.

I’ll add trying to politicize the Fed. That hasn’t been good for longer term interest rates, inflation expectations and the value of the dollar. Originally Posted by Tiny

VitaMan notes in another thread.

Trump managed to make another blunder today. He stated that if the Supreme Court decides he has no authority to issue tariffs, the money collected so far will have to be returned to the foreign governments. Originally Posted by VitaMan

Does Trump really believe that the tariffs collected were paid by foreign governments.

This idiot wants to run our economy and he’s stupid enough to believe that? His faithful followers will believe it just because he says so.

This is definitely Trump’s economy.

Ask those who buy (or used to buy) from Temu and others about who is paying the tariffs now that the 'de minimumus' exception has been repealed.

Next up: four two word phrases:

Green-Land
I believe the whole Greenland thing was predominately for rare earths.

U-Kraine
We get minerals from Ukraine regardless of who ends up ruling it.

West Texas
...Domestic sources of REEs in the U.S. include the Round Top deposit in West Texas, which hosts 15 of the 17 rare earth elements, including all the heavy rare earth elements, along with other high-tech metals like gallium and lithium.
This deposit is being developed by USA Rare Earth, which is building processing capabilities, including a proprietary Continuous Ion Exchange process, to extract and separate these elements...

Wheatland, Wyoming
Another significant discovery is an estimated 2.34 billion metric tons of rare earth minerals near Wheatland, Wyoming, which could potentially surpass China's reserves and establish the U.S. as the world's largest supplier.But Trump is not. Art of the Deal Amigo?!?

How about a txt, tweet or call from the artfull deal maker to some well to do entrepreneur/whiz-kid, requesting a couple billion dineros to start a plant in Wheatland, Wyoming.

Expand your thinking. Take more of what ever you were taking on post #10 above, unless it would violate board rulz.

Originally Posted by Why_Yes_I_Do

OK, I just had another big heaping glass of TES (Trump Enlightenment Syndrome) and am still not seeing it.

From what I'm reading, if the USA gets its ass in gear, then by the late 2020's, it can "likely meet material parts of defense and some auto/industrial magnet needs domestically (oxide + magnets) but will still rely on China for heavy rare earth elements." And reach broad independence from China for rare earth elements by 2030 to 2033.

By U.S. government standards, the capital cost to do this is chump change, $5 billion to $10 billion according to ChatGPT.

I first wrote about this here in 2019, and was well aware of the risk ever since Trump declared his first Trade War on China. But nobody listens to a lone voice on a hooker board.

So, at minimal cost, the Obama Administration could have spearheaded Rare Earth Independence and we'd be there by now, at minimal cost. Or Trump or Biden could have gotten it started during their prior administrations. But no. Apparently, President Obama, President Trump, and President Biden were all dumb asses. And the biggest dumb ass of the three, by 59 pounds, was Donald J. Trump:

https://potus.com/presidential-facts...oogle_vignette

No wonder China's making motions to take over Taiwan. If they get after it and get it done there will be very little the USA can do about it. China can just shut off rare earth products and bring America's defense industry to its knees. Trump did not get his ducks in a row before trying to impose massive tariffs on China, and he had to pull back on some tech export controls. He's now dealing from a position of weakness. He bluffed and he doesn't have the cards.

Admittedly Obama and Biden were totally incapable of standing up to the environmental lobby and pushing through development of rare earth deposits. Trump, as shown by his performance in getting Operation Warp Speed and the Wollman Rink completed, may be. Unfortunately California dominates U.S. rare earth reserves and mining, and Californians won't brook just about anything in their backyard. So America may be nuked, a vassal to China in the 21st century, unless it goes hat in hand to countries like Brazil, which have large deposits and fewer environmental restraints on processing. Too bad Trump's doing everything he can right now to antagonize the Brazilian government, including imposing 50% tariffs.

...By firing the director of the BLS and claiming that the jobs data was falsified. By trying to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook and packing the federal reserve board of governors because they won’t drop interest rates like he wants... Originally Posted by txdot-guy

Let's review the actual economy Biden left for him a bit more honestly. Eh Comrade?

Yeah, yeah, I know TL;DR, but the author states it better than myself.
Net-net is Trump was not handed an economy as advertised. It was fake.

The End of the Vibecession Myth and Biden’s Vanishing Jobs Boom
by John Carney 9 Sep 2025

Bye, Bye Biden’s Jobs Boom
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) this week performed its annual ritual of self-correction and admitted that the U.S. economy added 911,000 fewer jobs in the twelve months through March 2025 than it had previously reported. It was the largest downward revision on record.

Instead of creating 1.8 million jobs in that span, the economy managed only about 850,000. Instead of average monthly payroll gains of 147,000, the real figure was about 70,000.

This follows last year’s revision, which wiped away nearly 600,000 jobs from the tally for the year ended March 2024. Two years in a row, the government’s most closely watched jobs series painted a rosier picture than reality. Two years in a row, the cheerleaders of Bidenomics assured us that any discontent was in our heads—a trick of bad vibes and social media.

It turns out the voters were right, and the official statistics were wrong.

The Great Vibecession Fable
For much of 2023 and 2024, respectable opinion held that the U.S. was suffering not a real recession, but a “vibecession.“ The data, we were told, showed strength. Only voters, marinating in misinformation, imagined weakness.

Paul Krugman was the most diligent enforcer of this catechism. In July 2024, he wrote that “claims that Americans are much worse off than the official numbers say fail across the board.” A couple months earlier he assured readers that “by normal measures… the U.S. economy isn’t in bad shape. In fact, it’s doing quite well, better than almost all its global peers.”

When confronted with the suggestion that Americans might be weighing their lived experience above the charts, Krugman deployed his signature move: he just sighed at the gullibility of Americans who refused to believe the experts.

The sigh has not aged well. The statistics were wrong. The “booming” labor market was in fact crawling along at half the pace advertised. The vibecession wasn’t a mirage conjured by Fox News, TikTok, or right-wing vibes. It was reality, noticed first by the public and last by the experts.

Lectured from on High
The tone was always the same: experts scolding the deplorables. Voters said the economy was weak; pundits replied that they didn’t understand how good they had it. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell declared in December 2024 that “the U.S. economy has just been remarkable.” Jared Bernstein of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers proclaimed in June 2024: “It’s beyond question that this is one of the strongest labor markets that we’ve ever seen.”

It was all very fashionable to dismiss public skepticism as ignorance. Inflation had fallen, after all. Employment reports showed hundreds of thousands of new jobs. Anyone saying otherwise was accused of letting partisan narratives or “vibes” cloud their judgment.

Now we know the public was reading the economy better than the experts who claimed to speak for it.

The Fed Buys Its Own Press
The Federal Reserve wasn’t just a bystander in this myth-making. It believed the hype. Because it thought the economy was still adding jobs at a healthy clip, the Fed lowered interest rates only cautiously in late 2024—and then suddenly stopped lowering them with the restoration of Donald Trump’s presidency.

With the benefit of hindsight, the central bank was already behind the curve. A labor market eking out 70,000 jobs a month was one calling for urgent relief, not timid quarter-point trims. That is far less than most estimates of what the economy needs to produce just to keep up with an expanding population.

Future historians of monetary policy will surely look at the first half of 2025 as a lost opportunity for the U.S. economy and the Fed’s stand-pat policy as yet another mistake under Powell’s leadership. By August 2025, unemployment had climbed to 4.3 percent, the highest in nearly four years. That makes two institutions now facing questions about credibility: the BLS for publishing overstating job counts by unprecedented amounts and the Fed for building policy on them.

Trump’s Inheritance
This revision also recasts the political inheritance. The story last year was that Donald Trump was being handed an economy already matching his campaign promises: strong growth, rising jobs, cooling inflation. The New York Times ran a December headline calling the economy “remarkable” and noting that America was outstripping its global peers. Commentators marveled at the supposed paradox of a historic job market coexisting with voter pessimism.

But there was no paradox. Biden’s jobs boom was a mirage. Voters sensed weakness because weakness was there. Biden’s supposed gift to his successor was, like so much else in his presidency, inflated by bad data.

Two Years of Overstatement
What makes this more than a statistical quirk is the pattern. In February 2025, the BLS finalized a nearly 600,000-job downward revision for the year through March 2024. This September, it acknowledged another 911,000-job shortfall for the following year. Two years running, the government overstated the strength of the labor market by margins that would make a Chinese communist economic planning committee blush.

The vibecession wasn’t a psychological problem among voters or evidence that a GOP narrative had taken over the minds of the American people. Instead, it was a myth created to explain a mismatch between sentiment and statistics that was rooted in a measurement problem among government economists and statisticians.

The lesson of the past two years is straightforward: ordinary Americans saw the slowdown before the experts admitted it. They noticed the paychecks stretched thin, the jobs harder to come by, the security less certain. They were right, and the experts were wrong.

If there’s a reason Trump is back in the Oval Office, this is it. Voters weren’t duped by narratives or living in a fantasy. They simply recognized reality before the statistical establishment did.

In a nutshell, Trump can fix it, but with delusional Dems, who believe their own lies, yet struggle to come to grips with all their Orange Man Bad derangements, coupled with the Dems Frothy Chihuahua Syndrome of finding out they are now in the minority - which is more accurately stated as: No longer in sole power to control the narrative by getting a complicit media institution to keep the gas lighting turned up to 1,000 watts - the task is all the more difficult.

Ever notice how a row boat gets to it's destination faster when everyone is rowing in the same direction? YMMV

[

Green-Land
I believe the whole Greenland thing was predominately for rare earths.

U-Kraine
We get minerals from Ukraine regardless of who ends up ruling it.

West Texas
...Domestic sources of REEs in the U.S. include the Round Top deposit in West Texas, which hosts 15 of the 17 rare earth elements, including all the heavy rare earth elements, along with other high-tech metals like gallium and lithium.
This deposit is being developed by USA Rare Earth, which is building processing capabilities, including a proprietary Continuous Ion Exchange process, to extract and separate these elements...

Wheatland, Wyoming
Another significant discovery is an estimated 2.34 billion metric tons of rare earth minerals near Wheatland, Wyoming, which could potentially surpass China's reserves and establish the U.S. as the world's largest supplier.But Trump is not. Art of the Deal Amigo?!?

How about a txt, tweet or call from the artfull deal maker to some well to do entrepreneur/whiz-kid, requesting a couple billion dineros to start a plant in Wheatland, Wyoming.

Expand your thinking. Take more of what ever you were taking on post #10 above, unless it would violate board rulz.
Originally Posted by Why_Yes_I_Do

Sorry, I didn’t really reply. I read a short seller report on the Wyoming deposit a few months ago that questioned its viability. I believe they said there’s a good chance the concentration of rare earths in your backyard may be higher than at the Wheatland location. The security of supply from any operation in Ukraine is problematic. The people of Greenland and Denmark don’t seem disposed to hand over the island’s rare earth deposits. And I don’t know jack about the Texas deposit. Anyway has the artful deal maker done anything yet to develop alternate rare earth supplies? Just asking. I don’t know

...Anyway has the artful deal maker done anything yet to develop alternate rare earth supplies? Just asking. I don’t know Originally Posted by Tiny

I think we've drifted a bit far of the OP. However, I would still like to know more about what ever you were taking on post #10 above, unless it would violate board rulz.
Just kidding on the last part

Let's review the actual economy Biden left for him a bit more honestly. Eh Comrade?

Yeah, yeah, I know but the author states it better than myself.
Net-net is Trump was not handed an economy as advertised. It was fake.In a nutshell, Trump can fix it, but with delusional Dems, who believe their own lies, yet struggle to come to grips with all their Orange Man Bad derangements, coupled with the Dems Frothy Chihuahua Syndrome of finding out they are now in the minority - which is more accurately stated as: No longer in sole power to control the narrative by getting a complicit media institution to keep the gas lighting turned up to 1,000 watts - the task is all the more difficult.

Ever notice how a row boat gets to it's destination faster when everyone is rowing in the same direction? YMMV Originally Posted by Why_Yes_I_Do

The BLS was revising job numbers down before the election. Are the revisions worse than expected, Yes but BLS numbers always lag real time.

Yes the economy was worse under Biden than expected. But maybe Trump’s tariff policies and DOGE cuts and foreign policy and immigration policies have just made things worse. I suspect they affected the federal reserve into holding off on rate cuts.

We’re in a time of forced crisis brought on by an ever changing and unstable tariff environment, a pullback of traditional American foreign commitments, and a weakening of the labor force due to Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda.

Blame Biden all you want but this is still Trump’s economy. And by all accounts he’s making it worse.

In what way is the President trying to get democrats to “row” in his direction?

.

Appears over 100 small business leaders, from across the country, went to the Trump White House to bust a major group-nut all over Brain-Dead joey's false economy and to thank TRUMP for his hard work and accomplishments to help their small businesses thrive.

You know. The local businesses that hire local people to serve their local customers.
Anyway, seems they collectively splooged all over the o'biden-blunder economy.

...Representatives of small businesses located in 33 states visited the White House to express their gratitude and for talks on how the administration is working to help small businesses, a White House official told Breitbart News.

Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, delivered remarks regarding the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the ways in which it benefits small businesses, including a focus on tax cuts and deregulation. Small Business Administration Administrator Kelly Loeffler spoke on the administration’s efforts to support small businesses.

A recruiting company, a small pharmaceutical company, and small manufacturers were among the companies represented.

In a statement provided to Breitbart News. Timothy Opsitnick of TCDI in Greensboro, North Carolina, said business leaders were grateful for the chance to listen to Loeffler and Hassett and thank the administration.

“We are so grateful to come to the White House today to hear from leaders in the Trump Administration, and also express our thanks for President Trump and his Cabinet’s work to protect our small businesses,” he said. “Early this year we wrote a letter to President Trump asking for protection from a costly and dangerous regulatory overreach called the CTA, and within a matter of weeks, the Administration acted to save small business. When small business calls, the Trump Administration listens.”...

When asked for comment, the small business leaders responded:

Appears over 100 small business leaders, from across the country, went to the Trump White House to bust a major group-nut all over Brain-Dead joey's false economy and to thank TRUMP for his hard work and accomplishments to help their small businesses thrive.

You know. The local businesses that hire local people to serve their local customers.
Anyway, seems they collectively splooged all over the o'biden-blunder economy. Originally Posted by Why_Yes_I_Do

I’ll give credence to the inflation numbers. That’s good news if it lasts. It also means that it’s more likely that the fed will cut rates.

However 100 small business leaders (whatever that means) at a White House photo op is only evidence of an active press campaign by the administration.

It’s not actual economic data.

I’ll give credence to the inflation numbers. That’s good news if it lasts. It also means that it’s more likely that the fed will cut rates.

However 100 small business leaders (whatever that means) at a White House photo op is only evidence of an active press campaign by the administration.

It’s not actual economic data. Originally Posted by txdot-guy

...

... And yet, you've been sayin' all-along that President Trump
was ruining things with tariffs and the economy.

And LOOK at the inflation numbers! ... ...

#### Salty

...

... And yet, you've been sayin' all-along that President Trump
was ruining things with tariffs and the economy.

And LOOK at the inflation numbers! ... ...

#### Salty Originally Posted by Salty Again

It’s evidence that the Fed’s policy is working. Working despite the tariffs being foisted on the economy.

That doesn’t mean that it will last, nor that the tariffs are working at all for their intended purpose, to bring back manufacturing to America.

I think we’ll be lucky if the Supreme Court puts tariffs back into the hands of congress and out of the hands of the President. Either way we’re looking at the President’s tariffs till at least the end of the year.


https://thehill.com/homenews/adminis...trump-tariffs/

Supreme Court agrees to speedily review Trump’s tariffs
BY ZACH SCHONFELD - 09/09/25 4:31 PM ET

The Supreme Court announced Tuesday it will take up whether President Trump can use emergency powers to justify sweeping tariffs on trading partners across the globe, agreeing to the administration’s request to hear its appeal — and fast.

The expedited schedule will have the justices take the bench for oral arguments in the first week of November, a late addition to the calendar.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer has minced no words in describing the stakes, telling the justices that Trump’s tariffs are his “most significant economic and foreign-policy initiative.”

The justices will hear appeals in several underlying cases that concern whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) authorizes Trump’s sweeping tariffs.

Lower courts have rejected the administration’s arguments, but the administration has held out hope that the conservative-majority Supreme Court will rescue the tariffs, quickly appealing to the justices and urging them to move with speed.

Enacted in 1977, IEEPA authorizes the president to impose necessary economic sanctions during an emergency to combat an “unusual and extraordinary threat.”

Trump first invoked the law in February, citing an emergency over fentanyl to impose tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico. He later established an emergency over trade deficits to implement his global “reciprocal” tariffs on trading partners across the globe and pressure them into trade deals.

In a 7-4 ruling last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sided with a Democratic-led states and small businesses by invalidating Trump’s tariffs. The Supreme Court agreed to take up the administration’s appeal in that case after the challengers didn’t object.

Fundamentally, these cases come down to whether the president has virtually unlimited power to impose taxes in the form of tariffs on the American people, much like an absolute monarch,” Ilya Somin, a George Mason University law professor part of the businesses’ legal team, wrote in a blog post following the court’s announcement.

Trump’s tariff policy can stay in place until the Supreme Court rules on the sweeping case.

Here's what I do know. I've never struggled to find a job in my civilian industry. Quite literally-- when I put out my resume, I'll generally have a position within 2 weeks.


Just moved back home to Texas. A state that, allegedly, has a booming economy.


I'm now sitting at 8 weeks. Dozens of resumes have been sent out. I've had a grand total of two interviews.


My particular industry is a decent bellwether for the economy-- when times are good, things are great. When times aren't so good, things are awful. I'd consider hobbying again to make up for the long stretch without stable income-- but I'm also hearing how bad it it from many ladies......

How many Solyndra's does it take for even the most ardent TDS sufferers - to see the light?

Wholesale inflation unexpectedly declined in August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Wednesday morning.

The producer price index (PPI) inched down by 0.1% in August, beating economists' expectations, according to the BLS. Meanwhile, the index for final demand declined to a 2.6% increase for the 12 months ending in August, compared to a 3.3% increase in July, the BLS reported.

"One thing I found interesting looking at the numbers was so much of it was being driven by the energy prices going down," Preston Brashers, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation's Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. "That was the big driver in the overall PPI falling. It's interesting because we have been seeing so much deregulation and kinda pushing to open up federal lands and different things of that nature, and I think it's been having some success."

"At the same time, there was some concern from people about paring back the tax subsidies for the Green New Deal in the 'Big, Beautiful Bill,' that that would actually raise energy prices, but there doesn't seem to be any indication of that," Brashers added.

August's PPI report comes after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled on Aug. 22 that the central bank may lower interest rates in its upcoming September meeting. President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized Powell as being "too late" for declining to slash interest rates in 2025...

Apologies for spoolging all over another of their narratives.
But in my defense, The Green New SCAM was always just a money laundering operation.

Here's what I do know. I've never struggled to find a job in my civilian industry. Quite literally-- when I put out my resume, I'll generally have a position within 2 weeks.... Originally Posted by TalliaThomas

Coincidentally, I was already working an answer to your very topic.

...Net-net is Trump was not handed an economy as advertised. It was fake... Originally Posted by Why_Yes_I_Do

Since you might not ask, I figured I would:
How do I know it is fake? The joey economy and jobs data that is.

For the past 3+ years I've been working with friends, colleges and peers in helping them find jobs in the industry. Sometimes it's just a bit-o-hand holding (comforting), while others it's been much more interactive. Things like sharing job postings and making referrals and recommendations.

Some things I've seen along the way:

Agism: Sure, some employers want experience, just not at a commensurate salary and fear you might bolt for a better paying job.

Unfunded jobs: These are aspirational openings, i.e. fake. They do not actually exist, they are not funded. They might be later IF...<insert whatever rational here>. You can spot them when they've been around for many, many months when you know there are plenty of qualified candidates in the pool.

Duration: People are really struggling for extended periods of time in the quest to get reemployed. Many have depleted ready savings and are tapping into IRAs/401K and paying the added 10% tax, just to keep the lights on.

Face2Face interviews: Even via Zoom are far and few between. They do exist - sometimes. At best, you may get a call. Most likely you get crickets.

The ghost of interviews past: Even if someone reaches out one time, you may never hear from them again is an often encountered thing these days

AI calling: The newer trend is an AI-bot call. Most describe these as kinda creepy. Some sense them more as training the AI-bot, as opposed to screening for hiring, with all their polling for knowledge questions.

Speaking of AI: Not sure if you saw recent quip from a big tech company: They have reduced their support staff 50% (5,000ish) with AI. Fortunately, they were able to absorb most in other roles. Regardless, the support role are gone for good.

I would also add: Many of these colleagues have been unemployed up to a year+ and are struggling just to keep the lights on. Which leads to a budgeting tip I developed a few years ago, during lingering rounds of lay-offs:

You need to always have 2 budgets:

The one the gives you the quality of live you deserve
AND
The one that keeps just the lights on, i.e. barest minimum.

You would be surprised have far apart those dollar amounts actually are.