Top Trump Economic Adviser Admits Jobs Report ‘Isn’t Ideal’ on CNN: ‘There’s No Way Around That’
Stephen Miran, chairman of President Donald Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, admitted that the July jobs report published on Friday “isn’t ideal” during an interview with CNN’s Kate Bolduan.
Bolduan began the conversation by simply asking Miran for his reaction to the report.
“Look, you know, this jobs report isn’t ideal. There’s no way around that. But nevertheless, I think that the downward revisions reflect a couple of anomalous factors,” replied Miran, who continued:
First of all, about 60% of the downward revision is due to quirks of the seasonal adjustment process. Then on top of that, there’s the fact that the president created about, in the household survey, since the president took office, he created about 2.5 million jobs for Americans, whereas we’ve eliminated about a million jobs for foreign-born workers. That’s a result of our strong immigration policy, of our stronger border policy, keeping America safe. And eventually, the outflow of foreign workers in this data were bound to show up in the establishment survey, as they finally did this morning, too. Finally, we’ve been hearing a lot about uncertainty over the last few months, but that’s all resolved now. We’re creating trade deals left and right that have unlocked enormous new potential for the American economy. The tariff uncertainty is fading away. Tariff rates are settling in. The One Big Beautiful Bill is now law. There’s no more uncertainty over the tax bill either, over potentially the biggest tax hike in American history. And on top of that, there are such strong, powerful incentives in the one big, beautiful bill for investment. Things like full expensing on investment in equipment and R&D, on new factory structures. These are huge. So it’s all going to get much, much better from here.
“But on those major downward revisions from June and May, I mean, June was initially said to be 147,000 jobs added, now revised to be just 14,000 jobs added. That amounts to the weakest month of job growth since December of 2020,” observed Bolduan before asking: “And you attribute that to what, if it is not in part because of the uncertainty created in part by the president’s trade war?”
“Oh, I attribute it to the combination of the three things that I described before. About 40% of that is due to seasonal adjustment quirks around teachers. Some of it is due declining foreign-born employment, even as we created more American-born unemployment. And that is going to net out in a way that you see ultimately reflected in the data like that. And then finally, there’s the uncertainty, right? Don’t forget, we were in the midst of restructuring the global trading system in a ways that hasn’t been done in decades. The president is standing up for American workers and American firms for the first time in decades. And of course that was going to induce some uncertainty,” answered Miran. “It induced some volatility in financial markets, and we can see, it induces some volatility in economic data too, but that uncertainty is resolved. The tariff rates are set, the One Big Beautiful Bill is law, it’s gonna get better from here.”
Watch above via CNN.
