In a briefing before his State of the Union address, President Trump claimed that the U.S. has “the greatest economy we’ve ever had.” But most of the economic statistics he cites don’t back up his claim. Indeed, they tell a story he doesn’t want told.
Let’s start with the latest jobs report for February, which showed the economy lost 92,000 jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy lost jobs in six of the last 14 months going back to January 2025. The job-loss numbers so upset Trump last June when the monthly report showed a decline of 20,000 jobs that he fired the commissioner of the Bureau, Erika McEntarfer. Whom will he fire now?
Worse yet, in September 2024, Trump claimed, “We’re going to have a manufacturing boom.” Yet the country lost more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs over Trump’s first year. To be sure, manufacturing jobs had started declining a year before Trump entered office, and several factors are causing that decline. But he claimed his policies, especially his expansive use of tariffs, would reverse that trend. So far, that hasn’t happened.
The next important economic factor is inflation. In his State of the Union address, Trump asserted, “But in 12 months, my administration has driven core inflation down to the lowest level in more than five years. And in the last three months of 2025, it was down to 1.7 percent.” Calling that claim “misleading” would be generous.
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