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Team Trump struggles to spin the worst job numbers since the Great Recession (www.ms.now)

submitted 23 hours ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

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When the nation’s labor secretary flubs arithmetic while struggling to defend poor employment data, there’s a problem.

In mid-February, as Donald Trump’s State of the Union address neared, Peter Navarro, a leading White House voice on trade and economic policy, told Fox News that the U.S. economy was “perfect.” A week later, during JD Vance’s latest Fox News appearance, the vice president celebrated the “Trump boom” in the economy.

Soon after, the American public learned that economic growth during the first year of the president’s second term reached a nine-year low (excluding the pandemic). Late last week, the latest job numbers were even worse: The U.S. economy lost 90,000 jobs in February, and the unemployment rate inched higher.

Indeed, the closer one looked at the data, the worse the figures appeared. Trump has been in the White House for 14 months, and during that time the cumulative total is 150,000 jobs. In the last 14 months of Joe Biden’s presidency, by contrast, the American economy added 1.74 million jobs.

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[-] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 98 points 23 hours ago

I believe the US economy is entering a zombie state, buoyed by corruption and inertia it’s going to continue becoming less and less competitive until something chops the head off.

Like, you can actually pay the administration to blacklist your competitors now. You can pay for favourable laws, or pardons, or exemptions.

There’s going to be no real R&D anymore, and why bother when you don’t need to innovate, the government will just tariff your competition or ban them, or, force them to be “sold” like TikTok.

So why should companies hire staff? Why not lay them all off and save money? You’re not going to get beat by real competition anyways.

[-] Kirp123@lemmy.world 39 points 21 hours ago

There’s going to be no real R&D anymore

I mean US scientists are starting to leave the country. The brain drain is only going to get worse.

[-] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 14 points 21 hours ago

I know tech workers leaving too.

[-] inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world 20 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

I mean US corporations are never one to squander an opportunity to gouge the customer.

Remember the washing machine tariffs that Trump first administration put out? Not only did it raise prices "foreign" washing machines AND dryers, the US companies didn't bother to update their machines to compete with features or reliability, they ended up cutting factory jobs and RAISING their prices for US made washing machines and dryers to match the tariffed completion.

I mean why let a good opportunity to gouge the customer with your inferior product if the government is backing you?

[-] empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 18 hours ago

This is how all tariffs will always work every time. With how evenly globalized our supply chain is, any tariff will simply raise the price floor, not promote domestic manufacturing.

[-] lost_faith@lemmy.ca 1 points 19 hours ago

This was told to them by Reagan, would heed it if a Democrat did it but this time, THIS TIME it will work how we want

[-] DaddleDew@lemmy.world 22 points 22 hours ago

Make the recession great again

[-] TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today 7 points 20 hours ago

It's just the economics of late stage capitalism. Companies are mandated to increase profits year over year. In the beginning stages of capitalism this can be achieved by cornering new markets by out competing/taking over your competition. Once the market is cornered you can do things like innovate and streamline. Once this is tapped out the only real way to continue the profits is to conglomerate, monopolize, and racketeer.

We are pretty much past all of these options, or at the final stages, so the only option on the table is to reduce cost, and the largest cost of just about any company is labor. This is why all the mega corps are sinking their hopes into ai, it's their last way to squeeze as much money out of their organization as possible.

[-] disorderly@lemmy.world 49 points 22 hours ago

The economy not only shed jobs in February, it also lost jobs in two of the last three months, three of the last five months and five of the last nine months. (During Biden’s term, there were literally zero months in which the economy lost jobs.)

And this is all before the imminent corrections when the AI bubble pops, which will take us from accelerating tumble to free fall. An astounding feat, given what this administration was served up.

[-] FaygoRedPop@lemmy.world 32 points 22 hours ago

Trump isn't struggling with anything. He's thriving and there's nothing anyone is willing to do about it.

[-] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 8 points 21 hours ago

Convincing people to give him money while having felonies and being known of doing nasty things in the Epstein files and Maga isn't doing anything lol. Fucking wild timeline.

[-] FaygoRedPop@lemmy.world 8 points 20 hours ago

That's what I'm saying! To pretend that he is struggling doing anything political is delusional. It looks like he's physically struggling to exist, but I hope that ends soon. Painfully too.

[-] AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@piefed.social 23 points 22 hours ago

it's so sweet when they think the current admin is worried about the country's direction and not actively taking it where it's going...

[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 13 points 21 hours ago

Yeah, good luck polishing that turd, asshole. You were handed an economy that was the envy of the world, brazenly lied about it, and then proceeded to fuck it all up, just as Republicans almost always do.

this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2026

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