Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday that the Trump administration’s economic strategy is centered on fixing “the three I&#8217;s: immigration, interest rates, and inflation,&#8221; adding that Americans are traumatized by Biden-era inflation.
“One thing we’re not going to do is what the Biden administration did — tell the American people they don’t know how they feel,” Bessent said. “They are traumatized by Biden-era inflation. We’ve slowed it, and we’re working very hard to bring it down.”
Bessent argued that immigration has been a major driver of high housing costs and wage stagnation. With the border closed and deportations underway, he expects home prices to fall and wages to rise. He pointed to October’s strong housing data as evidence, with home sales reaching their highest level in three years.
“The prices get better,” he said. “Energy prices, gasoline are down, we believe health care is going to come down. This will be the lowest cost for a Thanksgiving dinner in four years. Turkey prices are down 16%.”
While inflation ticked up to 3% from its 2.3% low earlier this year, Bessent insisted it remains under control. He noted that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has lowered interest rates by 0.50% this year and have another rate cut on the table for December.
Bessent credited the president’s peace agreements, tax reforms, and new trade deals as key drivers of future affordability. His remarks come days after Vice President JD Vance called on Americans to have “a little bit of patience” with the Trump administration’s economic strategy.
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Recent criticism has focused on rising prices for certain food products. NBC’s Kristen Welker asked Scott Bessent if the administration’s rollback on tariffs proves Trump’s trade policies are raising consumer costs.
Bessent dismissed the argument, saying inflation “is a composite number” with many moving parts, meaning overall inflation can remain stable even as some products fluctuate. He predicted broader price declines once United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer finalizes new agreements in Latin America.
He also pointed to last week’s rollback on tariffs for more than 200 food products as proof that the White House is “pushing down the prices they can control,” rejecting claims that tariffs hurt consumers.
“Some prices will come down in weeks, some in months,” he said.
With major trade deals nearing completion, foreign peace negotiations wrapping up, and the One Big, Beautiful Bill tax reforms in place, Bessent said he is “optimistic for 2026.”

President Trump Signs Executive Order In The Oval Office

Bessent: Trump Admin Targeting ‘Three I’s’ To Restore Affordability

Economy

Politics

Scott Bessent

Tariffs

Thanksgiving

Trump Administration

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday that the economy isn’t headed for a large-scale recession, despite certain sectors showing recessionary signs.
Speaking with Kristen Welker of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Bessent was asked about the health of the economy.
“Big picture, Mr. Secretary, you said earlier this month, I&#8217;m going to quote you, ‘I think there are sectors of the economy that are in a recession.’ Kevin Hassett, Director of the National Economic Council, said: ‘We’re starting to see pockets of the economy that look like they might be in a recession.’ Which parts of the economy do you believe have dipped into a recession?” Welker asked.
“Well, clearly housing has been struggling … so interest rate-sensitive sectors have been in a recession,” Bessent replied.
The secretary then noted that the Democrat-led 43-day government shutdown wasn’t helpful to the economy, with nearly 10,000 flights canceled and a 1.5% hit to GDP.
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Welker pressed, asking if the entire country was at risk of entering a recession.
“No, I am very confident about 2026 because what we are going to see is the president has done peace deals, tax deals, and trade deals. The One Big, Beautiful Bill — and to go back to affordability, [it] has two components, so it&#8217;s price of goods and real incomes. So under the One Big, Beautiful Bill, especially for working Americans, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security, auto deductibility on loans for American cars — that’s all kicking in,” Bessent said.
He also said that when Americans change their withholding, there will be “substantial refunds to working families in the first quarter of 2026.”
“I am very, very optimistic on 2026. We have set the table for a very strong, non-inflationary growth economy,” Bessent concluded.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
Sec. Scott Bessent says big growth is coming in the Trump economy into 2026 <a href="https://t.co/64LP1f72k1">pic.twitter.com/64LP1f72k1</a>
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) <a href="https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1992612226897940744?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 23, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

White House To Ratchet Up Russia Sanctions, Bessent Says

Bessent ‘Very Optimistic’ On U.S. Economy In 2026 Despite Recession Fears

Meet the Press

Recession

Tyson Foods will close a major beef plant in Lexington, Nebraska, with about 3,200 employees in January after U.S. cattle supplies dropped to their lowest level in nearly 75 years, the meatpacker said on Friday.
The closure in the heart of cattle-feeding country signaled that supplies will remain tight, forcing meatpackers to pay steep prices for cattle to process into steaks and hamburgers.
Beef prices have set records due to low supplies and strong demand, raising costs for consumers. President Donald Trump said last month that he was working to bring down prices.
Tyson said it will also reduce operations at a beef plant in Amarillo, Texas, to a single, full-capacity shift, affecting about 1,700 workers.
&#8220;Tyson Foods recognizes the impact these decisions have on team members and the communities where we operate,&#8221; the company said in a statement.
Tyson said the changes were expected around January 20 and that it will increase production at other facilities to meet customer demand.
Beef prices soared this year as cattle supplies dwindled and meatpackers increasingly competed for limited supplies of livestock.
Ranchers slashed their herds after a years-long drought burned up pasture lands and hiked feeding costs. Some have slowly started to rebuild their herds, though it takes at least two years to raise full-grown cattle.
Tyson&#8217;s beef business suffered adjusted losses of $426 million in the 12 months ended on September 27 and $291 million over the previous year. The meatpacker projected the unit will lose $400 million to $600 million in the 2026 fiscal year.
&#8220;We all expected a plant to be closed at some point in 2026,&#8221; said Rich Nelson, chief strategist for Allendale. &#8220;I&#8217;m a little surprised they&#8217;re doing it preemptively.&#8221;
Losses in Tyson&#8217;s beef business were a turnaround from the fat profits it and other processors reaped during the COVID-19 pandemic, when meat prices soared as infections among plant workers slowed output.
The Lexington plant can process roughly 5,000 cattle per day, or about 5% of total U.S. slaughtering, but it has already been operating below capacity, said Matt Wiegand, commodity broker for FuturesOne in Nebraska. Its closure will shock the city of about 10,000 residents and hurt local feedyards that fatten cattle, he said.
&#8220;Tyson&#8217;s announcement will have a devastating impact,&#8221; said U.S. Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska. &#8220;It&#8217;s no secret that just a few years ago, packers like Tyson were making windfall profits while the rest of the industry was continuously in the red.&#8221;
In Amarillo, Tyson&#8217;s plant can slaughter roughly 6,000 cattle per day, according to industry estimates.
The White House had no immediate comment.
Trump has sought to boost beef imports from countries such as Argentina to ease prices for U.S. consumers, angering American ranchers. On Thursday, he removed 40% tariffs he had imposed this summer on Brazilian food products that slowed imports of beef used to make hamburger meat.
Trump has also accused meatpacking companies of driving up U.S. beef prices through manipulation and collusion, and ordered the Justice Department to investigate.
(Reporting by Tom Polansek; Editing by Nia Williams and Bill Berkrot)

Beef

Tyson Foods To Close Major U.S. Beef Plant As Cattle Supplies Dwindle

Food

General

Jobs

U.S.

The fate of the Trump administration — and perhaps Republicans in Congress as well — is tied to American sentiment about the economy.
And right now, nobody knows what the hell is going on or which way is up.
According to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/jobs-report-bls-september-stock-market-today-11-20-2025?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=AWEtsqcjgM64-wIPKktYARvEIXFsJzimXcvAC3fpAwUc7i4Gm1zHe0UCBW67Kh-iYj8%3D&amp;gaa_ts=6920c3b1&amp;gaa_sig=UP5t4kf3TCVh2knpn1gTpG9YTqEgZWWHF-Xp5Wk_rcJLrVoWejOhEl7QdCMjnOa0Gcq4dx_e4ZeKV-trUecuzw%3D%3D">The Wall Street Journal</a> on Thursday night:
<blockquote>Stocks surrendered gains and closed sharply lower after a whirlwind day of trading that began after Nvidia <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/nvidia-earnings-q3-2025-nvda-stock-9c6a40fe">posted strong results</a>. The Nasdaq composite led indexes lower after being up on the day more than 2%. It closed 2.2% lower. Nvidia gave up an even bigger gain and finished the day down 3.2%.</blockquote>
Why did they end up down?
Because investors suspect there is, in fact, an AI bubble.
That suspicion is not unrealistic. Whenever there&#8217;s a transformative technology, people seem to think that just because there is a bubble, that means that the underlying technology is not transformative. If you look back at the history of investment, however, there is always a speculative bubble around brand-new technologies, and it tends to clean out failing companies.
You remember the successful companies. So you remember Henry Ford because Ford ended up being a wildly successful company. But there were dozens of other automobile companies that were startups at the time that ended up crapping out. In fact, Ford had several of them before he actually started the Ford Motor Company.
The same thing was true of the internet.
Everyone remembers that when the Internet bubble burst in 2000, Pets.com was seen as emblematic of the era. 
But what we should remember is that the internet has completely transformed everybody&#8217;s life. We all work on the internet. We all do commerce on the internet; we all interact on the internet.
The stock market bubble of 2000 did not mean the internet wasn&#8217;t important. There are idiots like Paul Krugman who tried to suggest that it wasn&#8217;t important. It was very important.
That&#8217;s also true with regard to AI. People are looking at the current AI boom, and they&#8217;re thinking that at some point here it has to crap out, that some of these companies are not going to be able to develop the kind of margins or gross income that justifies the investment they are currently making. OpenAI is the most obvious example of a company that is not publicly traded, but has so many contracts with publicly traded companies ranging from Oracle to Nvidia that if it craps out, it could take down a bunch of companies with it, or at least severely damage their market capitalization.
According to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/technology/ai-stock-boom-nvidia.html#:~:text=Cade%20Metz%20has%20covered%20the,for%20more%20than%2015%20years.&amp;text=It%20would%20not%20be%20a,industry%20as%20a%20historic%20moment.">The New York Times</a>:
<blockquote>It would not be a stretch to describe this period of hyperactive growth in the tech industry as a historic moment. Nvidia, which makes computer chips that are essential to building artificial intelligence, said on Wednesday that its quarterly profit had jumped <a href="https://archive.is/o/5DcUP/https:/www.nytimes.com/2025/11/19/technology/nvidia-earnings.html">to nearly $32 billion</a>, up 65 percent from a year earlier and 245 percent from the year before that. Just three weeks ago, Nvidia became the <a href="https://archive.is/o/5DcUP/https:/www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/technology/nvidia-value-market-ai.html">first publicly traded company to be worth $5 trillion</a>. </blockquote>
That means Nvidia is now worth more, according to the stock market, than the entire economy of Germany. 
But some industry insiders say there is something ominous lurking behind all this bubble news. They look at the same eye-popping growth and the same stunning wealth creation from Mr. Huang and see a house of cards. And they say it is hard to know what the damage will be if it collapses.
Even Nvidia&#8217;s growth can be explained away because demand for the company&#8217;s chips doesn&#8217;t mean that people want to use AI; it means that companies are building giant AI systems in the hope that somebody will pay to use them eventually.
This is going to be the question: At some point, the productivity generation from AI is going to have to start matching up to the investments that are being made. People are betting on whether there&#8217;s going to be an AI boom that justifies all this or an AI bust. 
We don&#8217;t know which way it&#8217;s going, which is why people are freaking out.
They&#8217;re also freaking out because if it does succeed, there will be some temporary jobs dislocation. There are a lot of jobs that will become obsolete.
The history of job creation is that the economy becomes more productive. You get nicer things for cheaper prices. You work fewer hours; your grandparents worked many more hours than you do, for example.
But it also means that there is — with technological change —  significant job dislocation, people losing the kind of jobs they&#8217;ve historically held, and then having to find new jobs.
We&#8217;ve generated millions and millions of jobs in areas that we didn&#8217;t even know existed. This is just the way the economy tends to work.
That doesn&#8217;t mean that the angst and heartburn about job dislocation are false.
Thus, two things can be true at once: We can be in a transformative, amazing time for the economy, and the uncertainty and the concern can be real.
And it can&#8217;t all be alleviated by the government.

Dow Jumps Over 600 Points As Nvidia Reports Strong Earnings

What The Hell Is Going On With The Economy?

Artificial Intelligence

Ben Shapiro

Dow Jones

Nvidia

Opinion

Oracle

Silicon Valley

Stock Market

Wall Street

D.C. is abuzz today ahead of President Trump’s meeting with Mamdani, fallout from the Epstein files mounts, and the September jobs report smashes expectations.
It’s Friday, November 21, 2025, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. Today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below, and the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/mrn-251121">video version can be seen on The Daily Wire</a>:
<iframe style="width: 100%; max-width: 660px; overflow: hidden; border-radius: 10px;" src="https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/trump-meets-mamdani-epstein-fallout-continues-11-21-25/id1576594336?i=1000737766180" height="175" frameborder="0" sandbox="allow-forms allow-popups allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-storage-access-by-user-activation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation"></iframe>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Trump vs. Mamdani</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1003857" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Trump-Mamdani-Faceoff-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Trump-Mamdani-Faceoff-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Trump-Mamdani-Faceoff-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Trump-Mamdani-Faceoff-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Trump-Mamdani-Faceoff-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Trump-Mamdani-Faceoff.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Topline: Despite the pair’s verbal battle during the New York City mayoral race, President Donald Trump plans to meet with far-Left Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani at the White House on Friday afternoon.
There’s been a lot of back-and-forth between Trump and Mamdani. Trump even said during the mayoral campaign that he’d <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-warns-mamdani-no-federal-cash-for-a-communist-mayor">withhold federal fundin</a>g from New York City if Mamdani were to win. Since Mamdani has since won, that threat presumably now looms large. The meeting could be a chance to build a relationship, however.
Mamdani’s olive branch: It was Mamdani who reached out to Trump. He also changed his tone on Trump ahead of the meeting. During a presser on Thursday, Mamdani seemed to draw some parallels between himself and the president. That could be interpreted as an olive branch–but also as a self-serving comparison. 
“We ran a campaign focused on the … cost of living. And what we found actually is that one in 10 New Yorkers who voted for Trump ended up voting for our campaign, and they did so because they&#8217;re looking for leaders to actually deliver on the cost of living crisis,” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r6dYDsL_-c">said</a> Mamdani.
That is a far cry from Mamdani’s mayoral victory speech when he said he’d be “Trump-proofing” New York City and called Trump a “despot.”
What about Trump? Trump, too, seems open to the meeting. He obviously accepted the meeting request, and he also said this week that he wants to see “everything work out well for New York.”
What to expect: As for the agenda, Mamdani said he wants to talk to Trump about public safety, economic security, and affordability for New Yorkers.
“Affordability,” though, seemed to be Mamdani’s pitch to New Yorkers who really don’t like Trump and might not like him taking this meeting. Mamdani stressed that he’d work with anyone to bring down costs, and he acknowledged that he does need the White House. He needs funding from the federal government if he really wants to help New Yorkers.
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<h2 style="text-align: center;">What Comes Next On Epstein Files</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1003859" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Epstein-Files-Haunting-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Epstein-Files-Haunting-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Epstein-Files-Haunting-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Epstein-Files-Haunting-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Epstein-Files-Haunting-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Epstein-Files-Haunting.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Topline: After years of sealed documents and whispered allegations around Jeffrey Epstein, President Trump has signed the bill forcing the release of the Epstein files, as new emails and texts are already leaking.
The order directs all documents to be produced, but there are exceptions carved out for the protection of witnesses’ and victims&#8217; identities, for national security, and for ongoing probes. Those exceptions could still delay some of these documents.
At the same time, victims such as Annie Farmer, who testified alongside Virginia Giuffre&#8217;s family, are still <a href="https://x.com/OfTheBraveUSA/status/1963256584127013360">hailing</a> this as a long overdue victory.
The measure now requires Attorney General Pam Bondi to release all unclassified Epstein documents within 30 days, including flight records, emails, and plea deal details. 
The Trump flip:  The Trump and the White House previously opposed this full release of the files, but earlier this week, the president made a prominent turnaround in messaging.
One reason the White House resisted the release for months prior was that it felt the vote would be premature. Eventually, though, all of those objections melted away in the face of vociferous public pressure from people and critics who wanted answers.
President Trump ended up urging Republicans to vote for it because, as he posted on social media, “we have nothing to hide.” Trump has additionally called for a new investigation into various Epstein associates, including former President Bill Clinton and others.
What to watch:  There are many layers to this. One of those is the perception of Trump&#8217;s past association with Epstein, which appears to have hurt him, as well as his resistance, for a time, to releasing all the documents.
But this has been damaging for Democrats as well. The documents already released show that Epstein fed questions to Democratic Delegate Stacey Plaskett during a congressional hearing in 2019. On Tuesday, Plaskett <a href="https://x.com/greg_price11/status/1990899465318785072?s=20">characterized</a> her communication with Epstein as simply receiving texts from a constituent.
Many other figures have been wrapped up in the Epstein files, as well, including former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. He continued to communicate with Epstein up until 2019, long after Epstein had been put in jail.
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Jobs Report A Mixed Bag Ahead Of December Fed Meeting</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1003861" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Jobs-Report-Crushes-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Jobs-Report-Crushes-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Jobs-Report-Crushes-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Jobs-Report-Crushes-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Jobs-Report-Crushes-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Jobs-Report-Crushes.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Topline: The September jobs numbers are finally here after data was delayed nearly two months over the government shutdown. While administration officials are excited about the data, a new poll shows Americans may not be as optimistic about the direction of the economy.
The data: The headline number from the report is the 119,000 jobs added in September. It is the highest gain since April, and it came in more than double economists’ expectations for the month. Downward revisions for July and August’s numbers stole some of the momentum, coming in 33,000 lower than previously reported.
The unemployment rate ticked up slightly from 4.3% to 4.4%. Overall, the administration says it is happy with the numbers.
“In the first 10 months of the Trump economy, we&#8217;ve increased take-home pay by about $1,200, adjusting for inflation. That&#8217;s a huge, huge thing,” <a href="https://x.com/JDVance/status/1991541104966267022">said</a> Vice President JD Vance on Thursday. “And this is really important … we are seeing the job growth go to native-born American citizens” rather than to illegal aliens.
Looking ahead: This jobs report is particularly important because it’s the only snapshot of the labor market ahead of the Federal Reserve’s next meeting on December 9 and 10.
Heather Long, the chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, <a href="https://x.com/byHeatherLong/status/1991512177430134943">expects</a> the Fed to hold interest rates steady.
Long points out that even though the jobs report has good numbers in September, the economy’s four-month average ending in September is only 44,000–just barely “treading water.” Labor force participation is up, a good sign even as the unemployment rate ticks up. But, according to Long, “it&#8217;s hard to argue things look *better* in the labor market.” It has largely remained steady, with no significant gains or losses.
Is Trump in trouble? Americans overall are not optimistic about the direction the economy is heading.
Fox News released its latest national <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-voters-say-white-house-doing-more-harm-than-good-economy">survey</a> on Wednesday. According to Fox News, “Some 76% of voters view the economy negatively–worse than the 67% who felt that way in July and the 70% who said the same at the end of … President Biden’s term.”
The news gets worse for Trump, specifically. According to Fox News, “About twice as many [respondents] say President Donald Trump, rather than Biden, is responsible for the current economy. And three times as many say Trump’s economic policies have hurt them,” about the same as said Biden’s did last year.

MRN_251121_V1

Morning Brief: Mamdani At The White House, Epstein Files Loom, & Mixed Jobs Report

Morning Brief: Trump-Mamdani Meeting, Epstein Files Incoming, And September’s Mixed Jobs Report

Department of Labor

Donald Trump

Federal Reserve

Jeffrey Epstein

Morning Wire

Pam Bondi

Zohran Mamdani

A year apart, President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden both touted September job growth — but the source of that growth couldn’t be more different. Under Trump, the federal workforce shrank, while under Biden, it expanded.
Thursday’s jobs report showed an overall increase of <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf">119,000 jobs</a>, with the bulk coming from the private sector.
“The job growth was driven almost entirely by private-sector job gains,” stated the White House in a press release. Health care and construction industries led the way — adding 43,000 and 19,000 jobs, respectively. And while the private sector grew, the public sector shrank.
“Federal government employment continued to decline in September and is down 97,000 since reaching a peak in January,” the report showed. That figure may even understate the true contraction, as workers on severance are still counted as employed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
On the other hand, <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_10042024.pdf#:~:text=Household%20Survey%20Data%20Both%20the%20unemployment%20rate%2C,number%20of%20unemployed%20people%20was%206.3%20million.">Biden’s September 2024 report</a> told a different story. “Employment in government continued its upward trend in September,” the report stated. Under Biden, government jobs averaged a monthly gain of 45,000.
When Trump took office, federal jobs were at a peak. He implemented a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-extends-the-hiring-freeze/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">federal hiring freeze</a> initially scheduled to end July 15, which was later extended indefinitely. Once the freeze expires, federal agencies can hire no more than one employee for every four employees who depart from federal service. The freeze makes exceptions for jobs related to immigration, law enforcement, and public safety. Trump framed the reduction as a correction of the previous administration&#8217;s growth. The hiring freeze fact sheet explains, “In the last two years of the Biden administration, the government was directly responsible for the creation of more than 1 in every 4 jobs.”
Campaigning on eliminating waste, the Trump administration says the freeze is necessary to address the “billions of dollars wasted each year on duplicative programs and frivolous expenditures that fail to align with American values or address the needs of the American people.”
Not stopping at limiting new hires, the Office of Personnel Management estimates that by the end of the year, more than 300,000 federal employees will have left or lost their jobs. The Trump administration says it hopes many of those workers transition to private-sector positions.
The strength of private-sector job growth complicates the Federal Reserve’s path. CNBC’s Steve Liesman said the report “bolsters the case of the hawks on the FOMC who have said they do not see serious deterioration in the labor market … a robust report.”
According to Fed Chair Jerome Powell, without a weakening labor market, the case for a December rate cut becomes much harder.
At November’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting, Powell described a difficult balance: a tight labor market alongside higher-than-desired inflation. Ultimately, the Fed decided on a rate cut to avoid further disruption to employment.
“We’re in a difficult situation,” Powell said at the National Association for Business Economics. “If we move too quickly, then we may leave the inflation job unfinished. If we move too slowly, there may be painful losses in the employment market.”
Trump Economic Advisor Kevin Hassett <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/white-houses-hassett-says-government-shutdown-impact-means-fed-should-cut-rates-in-december-205031021.html?guccounter=1&amp;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAIfT9OGeVAKKbHJR4Tc3o4i4IUGV_jwsWj6OEQ8pCpV9PPLtJmCmTCXD4cqtQ1RwqCeiHtlpYZfcCj9KieR8wHDmrBZ3JmV40xfO9AUcSvmmtUin-czVIwgJGFLU1WUxtldZKbbACfYT06DHFrn6jaTYSiXXdyPTtPvvGasDDKHL">says</a> he expects the government shutdown to knock 1.5% off of fourth quarter GDP, making now “a very bad time” to pause rate cuts despite a strengthening labor market.

Donald Trump and Joe Biden

One Year, Two Jobs Reports: How Trump And Biden Drove Job Growth In Very Different Ways

Joe Biden

Unemployment

The Trump administration did a victory lap on Wednesday as new data shows America&#8217;s trade deficit with foreign countries plummeting, but multiple economists told The Daily Wire that reducing the trade deficit does nothing to move the U.S. economy in the right direction.
A new report from the Commerce Department showed that the U.S. trade deficit decreased by 24% in August as the president&#8217;s tariffs hit countries around the globe. The White House <a href="https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1991158360280826034">highlighted</a> the new trade data and said it is &#8220;more proof that President Trump’s trade and economic agenda continues to pay off for the American people.&#8221;
&#8220;As the President’s historic trade deals and pro-growth policies continue to take effect and trillions in investments to make and hire in America continue to materialize, Americans can rest assured that the best is yet to come,&#8221; White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement shared with The Daily Wire.
A trade deficit occurs when a country&#8217;s imports — the products it brings into the country from other nations — exceed its exports — what it ships to other countries to be sold in their markets. Trump has <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/regulating-imports-with-a-reciprocal-tariff-to-rectify-trade-practices-that-contribute-to-large-and-persistent-annual-united-states-goods-trade-deficits/">argued</a> that the United States has been unfairly treated by its trading partners, partially due to &#8220;large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits.&#8221;
The data, released by the Commerce Department&#8217;s Bureau of Economic Analysis and Census Bureau, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/us-trade-deficit-narrows-sharply-august-imports-fall-2025-11-19/">shows</a> that as Trump&#8217;s tariffs took hold, U.S. imports decreased 5.1%, while exports remained flat. For comparison, U.S. imports rose in July while many of the president&#8217;s tariffs were still in limbo, suggesting that American companies were stocking up on products before the tariffs went into effect. Now, companies are importing fewer products and machinery as they seek to avoid paying high tariffs for their goods, which could be a concerning sign about the future of the U.S. economy, according to Colin Grabow, associate director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.
&#8220;It was reported that the decline in the trade deficit was more specifically due to U.S. firms reducing their purchases of machinery, industrial supplies, pharmaceutical ingredients, and telecom equipment, and this really speaks to the misplaced obsession some people have with trying to reduce imports or thinking that reduction is a good thing,&#8221; Grabow said. &#8220;These are all imports used in the production of stuff. We take foreign machinery and we put it in American factories and we make stuff. Well, if we&#8217;re importing less of that, it tells me we&#8217;re going to be producing less stuff.&#8221;
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E.J. Antoni, the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, said that while a deficit is usually a negative term when talking about money, a trade deficit can often be a good thing. Antoni argued that trade deficits driven by foreign investments are positive for the United States and have been the norm for most of American history.
&#8220;From even before our nation was founded, before the Revolutionary War all the way through the Gilded Age in the late 19th century, we ran a trade deficit in every single year except for seven years. And of those seven years, in four of them we were at war with Great Britain, so obviously they didn&#8217;t want to trade with us very much, and the other three were banking panics when Americans were basically so poor they couldn&#8217;t afford anything from abroad.&#8221;
Antoni explained that it&#8217;s more important for Americans to look at how and why the trade deficit is shifting, saying it&#8217;s better for a trade deficit to be driven up by foreign investments than for the deficit to come down because the United States sold off revenue-generating assets.
&#8220;When it comes to international trade, much of the assessment of whether things are good or bad for Americans comes down to not just the numbers themselves, but why the numbers are moving in one direction or another,&#8221; Antoni said. &#8220;Again, a trade deficit is not in and of itself bad. It&#8217;s a complete misnomer.&#8221;
Dr. Wayne Winegarden, senior fellow in economics at the free-market Pacific Research Institute, told The Daily Wire that he was confused by why the Trump administration was celebrating a decrease in the trade deficit.
&#8220;When we&#8217;re saying the trade deficit is smaller, we&#8217;re simultaneously saying the capital surplus is smaller.&#8221; Winegarden said.
&#8220;Over the last three months, exports have basically stagnated, we&#8217;re not selling any more overseas,&#8221; he added. &#8220;Imports are down, meaning consumers have less access to affordable goods and manufacturers have less access to the materials they need, so I&#8217;m trying to figure out how that&#8217;s a good thing.&#8221;

Photo of Trump: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images / Illustrated by The Daily Wire

America’s Trade Deficit Is Dropping Thanks To Trump’s Tariffs. Will That Improve The Economy?

Economics

trade

Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda was smiling for photos and giving two thumbs up as he donned a red “Make America Great Again” hat and a Trump-Vance shirt during an American-themed NASCAR event in Japan over the weekend.
“I’m not here to argue whether tariffs are good or bad. Every national leader wants to protect their own industry,” Toyoda <a href="https://www.autonews.com/toyota/an-toyota-akio-toyoda-maga-nascar-trump-japan-tariff-1116/">said</a> ahead of the exhibition. “We are exploring ways to make tariffs a winner for everyone. The people we want most to be winners are our customers.”
Japan now has a roughly 15% baseline tariff on auto imports, down from 27.5% following September trade negotiations.
The America-themed celebration at Fuji Speedway featured top NASCAR drivers, fans waving American flags, and an appearance from U.S. Ambassador to Japan George Glass. The ambassador posted photos of himself at the event alongside the caption, “Start your engines! &#8230; Looking forward to celebrating the culture of motorsports again next year, as part of our [America250] festivities in Japan.” 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda showed up to a NASCAR event on Sunday repping MAGA gear.
BASED 🔥🔥🔥🇺🇸 <a href="https://t.co/NnkbuJaNfk">pic.twitter.com/NnkbuJaNfk</a>
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) <a href="https://twitter.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1990855538045792277?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 18, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The event came days before the carmaker announced on Tuesday a $912 million investment in its U.S. manufacturing operations, aimed at expanding hybrid production in Southern states.
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Per Motor Intelligence <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/18/toyota-hybrid-plants.html">data</a>, Toyota currently has more than 51% market share of hybrid vehicles through the third quarter of this year.
“Customers are embracing Toyota’s hybrid vehicles, and our U.S. manufacturing teams are gearing up to meet that growing demand,” Kevin Voelkel, Toyota Motor North America senior vice president of manufacturing operations, <a href="https://pressroom.toyota.com/toyota-boosts-hybrid-production-with-912-million-investment-creating-252-new-u-s-manufacturing-jobs/">said</a>. “Toyota’s philosophy is to build where we sell, and by adding more American jobs and investing across our U.S. footprint, we continue to stay true to that philosophy.”
Toyota announced last week it will invest as much as $10 billion into the United States over the next five years, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-11-14/toyota-confirms-up-to-10-billion-investment-in-u-s">confirming</a> what President Donald Trump had said in October after meeting with the company’s CEO.

Akio Toyoda

Toyota CEO Goes Full MAGA At NASCAR Event Then Drops $912M On U.S. Jobs

Toyota CEO Rocks MAGA Hat At NASCAR Event, Then Announces Nearly $1B Boost To U.S. Manufacturing

Business

Cars

Japan

MAGA

President Donald Trump told McDonald&#8217;s franchise owners on Monday night that his 2024 election victory was vital to the U.S. economy, touting his push to lower prices.
Trump opened his <a href="https://www.c-span.org/program/white-house-event/president-trump-speaks-at-the-mcdonalds-impact-summit/669162">remarks</a> at the 2025 McDonald&#8217;s &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-to-address-mcdonalds-franchise-owners-as-he-focuses-on-driving-down-food-costs?author=Zach+Jewell&amp;category=undefined&amp;elementPosition=7&amp;row=3&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+News&amp;rowType=Vertical+Carousel&amp;title=Trump+To+Address+McDonald%E2%80%99s+Franchise+Owners+As+He+Focuses+On+Driving+Down+Food+Costs">Impact Summit</a>&#8221; in Washington, D.C., by referring to a 2024 campaign stop that helped fuel his election victory, when he handed out orders to customers at a McDonald&#8217;s in Pennsylvania.
&#8220;I&#8217;m honored to stand before you as the very first former McDonald&#8217;s fry cook ever to become president of the United States,&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;And I actually was there for about 30 minutes, and that was 30 minutes longer than Kamala [Harris] was there, despite her job at McDonald&#8217;s. That didn&#8217;t work out too well.&#8221;
The summit also featured speeches from Democratic politicians, such as New York Governor Kathy Hochul, Maryland Governor Wes Moore, Rep. Pete Aguilar of California, and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The event provided Trump with an opportunity to push forward the administration&#8217;s refocused efforts to address economic issues.
During his speech, Trump argued that under former President Joe Biden, &#8220;Welfare was going up &#8230; government jobs were going up, real jobs were going down.&#8221;
&#8220;You would&#8217;ve had a catastrophe,&#8221; he added. &#8220;You probably would&#8217;ve had a bankrupt country. You are so damn lucky that I won that election, I&#8217;m telling you.&#8221;
Trump acknowledged that &#8220;there&#8217;s still a lot of work to do&#8221; in his effort to boost the economy and help businesses, but argued that America is already in a &#8220;golden age.&#8221;
&#8220;Because we are doing better than we&#8217;ve ever done as a country,&#8221; the president added. &#8220;Prices are coming down and all of that stuff. &#8230; Nobody has done what we&#8217;ve done in terms of pricing. We took over a mess.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@POTUS</a>: &#8220;There&#8217;s still a lot of work to do—and we&#8217;re making tremendous progress. 1.9 million more American-born workers are employed today than when I took office&#8230; Wages for hourly workers are rising at the fastest pace in 60 years.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/2Hvu33hnO6">pic.twitter.com/2Hvu33hnO6</a>
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) <a href="https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/1990564881293324452?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 17, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The president said that inflation remains one of the issues that his administration would continue to address. Trump said he would like to see inflation drop &#8220;a little bit lower,&#8221; as the White House seeks to address Americans&#8217; lingering economic concerns.
&#8220;We have it down to a low level, but we&#8217;re going to get it a little bit lower. We want perfection,&#8221; Trump said.
Year-over-year <a href="https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-price-index-by-category-line-chart.htm">inflation</a> sits at 3% as of the latest update. It has hovered at fairly low levels — between 2.5% and 3.5% — throughout Trump&#8217;s second term, but Americans continue to see the prices of some food items increase. Ground beef, for example, shot up 13.5% from last year. The prices of imported foods, such as bananas, avocados, and coffee, have also increased due to Trump&#8217;s so-called reciprocal tariffs, which he imposed on nearly every country worldwide.
The Trump administration <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-rolls-back-tariffs-on-dozens-of-food-imports-heres-what-will-be-affected">acknowledged</a> last week that some tariffs on food are negatively affecting Americans and moved to roll back tariffs on numerous food items, including beef, coffee, tea, bananas, oranges, tomatoes, and tropical fruits and fruit juices. During his speech on Monday night, however, Trump argued that his tariffs are an overall benefit to the United States.
&#8220;We have over $17 trillion being invested in our country in nine months. It&#8217;s now just about ready to crack $18 [trillion], and by the end of one year, we will have about $20 to $21 trillion invested in our country,&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;That&#8217;s more [than] 10 times the highest amount ever invested in any country ever before, and it&#8217;s largely because of tariffs.&#8221;
Trump thanked McDonald&#8217;s for working to lower its prices, but many Americans have complained that the fast-food giant&#8217;s prices have continued to rise. According to The Economist’s “<a href="https://www.economist.com/interactive/big-mac-index" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Big Mac Index</a>,&#8221; McDonald’s prices have increased in recent months, with the average cost of the chain’s signature Big Mac jumping to $6.01 as of July, which was up from $5.69 at the same time last year. Trump suggested that he would speak at the summit next year if the company gets prices &#8220;down enough.&#8221;
&#8220;And I want to give a very special thanks to McDonald&#8217;s for slashing prices for your most popular items, bringing back extra value meals. And I hear you&#8217;re recommitting to the affordable options of Americans that we really know and love, all of the items that we love,&#8221; Trump said, adding, &#8220;We&#8217;re getting prices down for this country and there&#8217;s no better leader or advocate than McDonald&#8217;s and I believe the next time I&#8217;ll have to be back here again next year if you get them down enough.&#8221;

Trump Touts Economic Record In McDonald’s Speech: ‘You’re So Damn Lucky I Won The Election’

Executive

McDonald’s

As President Donald Trump focuses his energy on bringing food costs back down, he&#8217;s taking his messaging to the people who serve food to millions of Americans for a living each day: McDonald&#8217;s franchise owners, operators, and suppliers.
Trump is set to address an audience of McDonald&#8217;s franchisees in Washington, D.C., on Monday evening as the White House does a full-court press on economic issues, Axios <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/11/17/trump-affordability-mcdonalds-summit">reported</a>.
&#8220;The Biden administration started the affordability crisis, but President Trump will end it so all Americans can achieve economic prosperity,&#8221; a White House official told Axios.
Trump is scheduled to speak at 6:00 p.m. ET. The &#8220;Impact Summit&#8221; will also <a href="https://foxbaltimore.com/news/nation-world/trump-to-speak-on-affordability-at-mcdonalds-impact-summit-french-fries-wes-moore-kathy-hochul-rahm-emanuel-rep-pete-aguilar-washington-dc-one-big-beautiful-bill-economy">feature</a> a slate of Democratic speakers, including New York Governor Kathy Hochul, Maryland Governor Wes Moore, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA), and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. It&#8217;s a venue where Republicans and the Trump administration want to make their presence known as the economy comes back to the forefront of the political conversation.
The summit will give Trump a chance to double down on his administration&#8217;s efforts to address the economy and food prices. McDonald&#8217;s CEO Chris Kempczinski warned earlier this month that inflation was continuing to place &#8220;pressure on the industry.&#8221;
&#8220;It&#8217;s still a difficult environment, and inflation is proving to be sticky,&#8221; Kempczinski said, according to <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/retail/mcdonalds-ceo-warns-rising-beef-prices-remain-challenge-inflation-stays-sticky">Fox Business</a>. &#8220;I mean, we&#8217;re expecting to see there&#8217;s going to be above-average inflation next year. … We&#8217;re seeing very, very high inflation around beef prices versus what we&#8217;re used to historically, and so I think all of that just keeps putting pressure on the industry.&#8221;
McDonald&#8217;s executives have said that higher overhead costs have forced the company to raise prices, which has driven away many low-income customers.
Year-over-year <a href="https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-price-index-by-category-line-chart.htm">inflation</a> has gone down from where it stood during most of former President Joe Biden&#8217;s term, but has hovered around 3% during the first eight months of Trump&#8217;s second term. McDonald&#8217;s prices have also risen in recent months, with the average price of the chain&#8217;s signature Big Mac <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-talk-up-economy-meeting-with-mcdonalds-owners-operators-2025-11-17/">jumping</a> to $6.01 as of July, which was up from $5.69 at the same time last year, according to The Economist&#8217;s &#8220;<a href="https://www.economist.com/interactive/big-mac-index">Big Mac Index</a>.&#8221;
Ground beef, overall, has risen 13.5% from last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Trump has argued that high food prices are leftover effects from the Biden administration, which saw inflation rise to 9.1% in June 2022.
The Trump administration has taken more steps recently to address high prices and point out where prices have fallen.
&#8220;Since Day One, the Trump Administration has been on a mission to tame Biden’s inflation crisis, stop the sky-high Biden price increases, and lower costs for everyday families — and while it can’t happen overnight, evidence shows the trend is in the right direction,&#8221; the White House <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/11/were-making-big-progress-on-prices-and-well-keep-working-to-make-sure-everyone-benefits/">said</a> on Friday.
Trump also removed tariffs on hundreds of food imports on Friday, marking a major pivot in the president’s trade strategy. Trump&#8217;s tariff rollback is aimed at lowering prices for Americans and will apply to food items that are not grown or produced in the United States in “sufficient quantities,” including beef, coffee, tea, bananas, oranges, tomatoes, and tropical fruits and fruit juices.
McDonald&#8217;s is a personal favorite of Trump&#8217;s. The president made a pit stop at a McDonald&#8217;s location in Pennsylvania during the 2024 campaign, where he ran the fry cooker and served food to customers. He has also served McDonald&#8217;s food to special guests in the White House.

Trump To Address McDonald’s Franchise Owners As He Focuses On Driving Down Food Costs

Inflation

The current median price for a single-family home in America has surged to <a href="https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/home-prices-surge-five-times-median-income-nearing-historic-highs">five times</a> the median household income, causing panic among young people that the dream of homeownership may no longer be attainable.
There’s no single explanation for the spike, but there is one that’s been singled out by both President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance: the massive influx of illegal immigrants into the United States during the Biden administration, when the southern border was effectively left open. Estimates suggest that more than 10 million illegal immigrants were encountered under Biden.
“We … cannot ignore the impact that the flood of 21 million illegal aliens has had on driving up housing costs,” Trump <a href="https://singjupost.com/full-transcript-trump-speaks-at-the-economic-club-of-new-york/?singlepage=1">said</a> during a speech at the Economic Club of New York in September 2024. Vance brought the subject up again just this Thursday, <a href="https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1989058155779932651">saying</a> that there could be as many as 30 million illegal immigrants in the United States “taking houses” from Americans.
“A lot of young people are saying, ‘Housing is way too expensive.’ Why is that? Because we flooded the country with 30 million illegal immigrants who are taking houses that ought to, by right, go to American citizens,” Vance said. “And at the same time, we weren’t building enough new houses to begin with, even for the population that we had.”
There are certainly multiple reasons that the Trump administration is forging ahead with its effort to carry out mass deportations, and the White House argues that one of the best ways to fix the housing market would be to address the illegal immigration crisis.
Many of the illegal immigrants in the United States move to city centers across the country when they enter, receiving government handouts and housing. The majority of illegal immigrants are pushed to find government shelters or cheap places to rent, given the difficulty of attaining a home without legal status in the country. Some of them, however, have been able to purchase American homes thanks to multiple mortgage companies agreeing to lend money to illegal immigrants without a social security number or green card, The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/inside-the-company-financing-the-illegal-alien-takeover-of-american-homes">uncovered</a> earlier this year.
There is disagreement from economists and immigration experts on whether deporting the massive illegal population would have any measurable impact on the housing market at all. Norbert Michel, the vice president and director for the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, said he believes “the idea that illegal immigration has something to do with it is absolutely insane.”
The libertarian organization’s expert said that it’s possible illegal immigrants could have minimal effects on housing markets in certain pockets of the country, but on the national level, he said it’s a non-factor.
“Do I think that’s a national-level problem? Absolutely not,” Michel said.
E.J. Antoni, the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, agrees with Trump and Vance’s argument, saying it’s undeniable that such a large population would impact the market. He argues the mass deportation of illegal immigrants would have “the single biggest impact” on helping fix America’s housing problems.
“You can’t import over 10 million illegal aliens in a very short period of time and expect it not to have an impact on the real economy. Those people are all on the demand side of the housing equation. In other words, it’s 10 million additional people who now are looking for a place to live,” Antoni told The Daily Wire.
“This is econ 101: if you increase demand, you will increase price,” Antoni said.
Even though the vast majority of illegal immigrants are not technically in the market for owning a home, they still add pressure to the housing market. Increased demand for rental properties would increase lease prices and force more Americans to look at buying homes, Antoni argued.
“No matter which way you slice it, all of these people here increasing the demand for dwelling units is ultimately still going to have the effect of increasing the price of home ownership,” he said.
Studies have shown that illegal immigration can negatively affect the housing market.
Jason Richwine, a resident scholar at the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Daily Wire that researchers consistently find that high immigration, both legal and illegal, drives up housing costs “almost every time it’s studied.” One of the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1051137717300025">studies</a> Richwine highlighted, from the Journal of Housing Economics, found that influxes in immigration “are associated with rising rents and prices,” especially in suburban areas.
“What they looked at was not only the impact on the given housing market where immigrants were coming to, but also the spillover effect. In other words, what happens to the price of housing in the areas just outside of the places where immigrants are coming to,” Richwine said. “What they found was that immigration raises the cost directly within the market immigrants arrive in, but even more so raises the cost around the area, with the idea being that people would prefer to live away from where the immigrants are coming to.”
Antoni acknowledges that there are other factors contributing to the housing market that are in the government’s control. He highlighted regulatory burdens placed on the housing industry by the government, which “makes it more difficult and more expensive to bring houses to market.”
A National Bureau of Economic Research <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w33876/w33876.pdf">study</a> showed that construction of new homes is falling far behind the pace of previous generations. According to the study, “If the U.S. housing stock had expanded at the same rate from 2000-2020 as it did from 1980-2000, there would be 15 million more housing units.” From 2000 to 2020, while new home building was falling behind the pace of previous decades, illegal border crossings skyrocketed.
The libertarian Cato Institute, which generally opposes mass deportations, has argued that losing the illegal immigrant population may, in fact, increase housing costs because of how many of them work in construction.
The <a href="https://www.cato.org/blog/jd-vance-correct-immigration-increases-housing-prices-thats-ok">article</a>, published by Cato last year in response to Vance’s comments about housing, agreed that illegal immigrants increase housing costs, but said the uptick in prices shouldn’t spark alarm or result in federal government action.
“Estimates show that about 30 percent of all construction workers are immigrants, with higher rates in California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey, and Nevada. Deporting those workers or halting more immigrants will reduce the growth in the housing supply,” the author stated.
Antoni, the Heritage Foundation’s chief economist, disagreed with that argument.
“At the same time you have this massive influx of illegal aliens, you did not see a corresponding increase in home construction,” he said. “It was not as if all of these illegal aliens coming across the border suddenly caused a surge in the construction of new dwellings. That simply did not happen.”
Michel doesn’t just believe that illegal immigration has little to no effect on the housing market; he also rejects the premise that there’s a “housing crisis” to be fixed.
“I reject the crisis narrative from the beginning,” Michel said. “If you look at median annual housing costs as a percentage of income, it’s been pretty flat for quite a while. It’s almost exactly what it was in 2011. If you want to say there was a big bump during COVID, that’s true, but it’s come back down to the pre-pandemic level if you look at prices as a percentage of income.”
Michel pointed to some <a href="https://www.cato.org/blog/us-housing-market-not-facing-crisis">data</a> to back up his argument. As of 2023, renters and first-time homebuyers were paying roughly the same percentage of their annual income on housing that they were in 2011. “It’s pretty hard to call that a crisis,” Michel said.
The cost of housing will almost certainly remain a topic of political debate for months as Republicans and Democrats prepare for the 2026 midterm elections. Nearly every young American — 97% of Gen-Z and 93% of Millennials — says they want to buy a home one day, and a staggering 84% of the younger generation say they’re delaying major life milestones like getting married or having kids until they can do so, according to a <a href="https://fortune.com/2025/11/10/gen-z-delaying-milestones-housing-affordability-crisis-no-single-fix/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Coldwell Banker report</a>.
Convincing Americans that Trump’s immigration crackdown will benefit them could be a key factor in how Americans view the president’s economic record when voters go to the polls again.

Housing Market/ICE

Will Mass Deportations Fix The Housing Market?

Deportations

Housing

Illegal Immigation

The Trump administration notched a victory when a Kentucky federal judge temporarily blocked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from implementing a rule critics say puts Americans&#8217; financial data at risk.
The 1033 Rule, proposed under President Joe Biden&#8217;s CFPB Director Rohit Chopra, <a href="https://www.consumerfinance.gov/personal-financial-data-rights/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">requires</a> banks to &#8220;make available to consumers, upon request, transaction data and other information concerning a consumer financial product or service that the consumer obtained from the covered entity.&#8221;
Forcht Bank, the Kentucky Bankers Association, and the Bank Policy Institute sued to block the rule, saying it exceeded the CFPB’s authority and would force the institutions to hand over large amounts of sensitive data, creating security and liability risks. Judge Danny C. Reeves of the United States District Court for Kentucky concluded the rule could cause more harm than good.
&#8220;The public could arguably lose some benefit from the Rule not being enforced at the set compliance deadlines,&#8221; said the judge. &#8220;However, the plaintiffs also contend that enforcement of the current Rule puts consumers at risk due to security risk as to their banking information.&#8221;
The <a href="https://bpi.com/joint-statement-on-courts-decision-to-stay-section-1033-compliance-deadline/">Bank Policy Institute</a> issued a statement saying the organization was grateful for the court&#8217;s decision.
&#8220;This is a common-sense procedural step,&#8221; said the Bank Policy Institute. It &#8220;doesn’t interfere with the rulemaking process but ensures banks won’t be forced to invest time and resources preparing for a rule that is currently being rewritten.”
&#8220;This preliminary injunction marks a pivotal moment for those who value consumer privacy and limited-government issues,&#8221; a source familiar with the matter told The Daily Wire. &#8220;The Trump administration now has a unique opportunity to advance a new 1033 rule that gets the government out of the way and unleashes innovation.”
Under Vought&#8217;s leadership, the CFPB issued <a href="https://www.consumerfinance.gov/personal-financial-data-rights/">an advance notice of proposed rulemaking,</a> inviting the public to give input to form the basis of the final rule. Once input has been provided, the CFPB will share a draft of the rule.
The CFPB is now analyzing public comments and data around four key issues related to the implementation of the 1033 rule: who should be allowed to access financial data on a customer&#8217;s behalf, whether companies should be allowed to charge data sharing fees, how big are the security risks of sharing financial data, and how big are the privacy risks.
The Bank Policy Institute writes that the current rule &#8220;unlawfully mandated banks to share sensitive consumer data with third-party fintechs and aggregators; it required no oversight of third parties using bank customer data,&#8221; among other issues.
Earlier this year, Chopra was notified that he had been <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-fires-rohit-chopra-director-of-the-consumer-financial-protection-bureau/">fired by the president</a> via an email from the White House. President Trump appointed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to lead the agency in interim before handing the reins over to Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought.
Rethinking the CFPB has been a priority of the Trump administration&#8217;s since the start of his term. In February, the White House issued a statement stating that the agency &#8220;has long functioned as another woke, weaponized arm of the bureaucracy that leverages its power against certain industries and individuals disfavored by so-called elites.&#8221;
The Trump administration accused the CFPB of &#8220;supporting radical advocacy groups, threatening banks for refusing to lend to illegal immigrants, targeting a Chicago small business after it complained about the city&#8217;s rampant crime, and mining American citizens&#8217; personal financial information.&#8221;
On The Charlie Kirk Show, Vought discussed the importance of putting a stop to the agency&#8217;s ability to weaponize &#8220;the tools of financial laws against small mom and pop lenders and other small financial institutions.&#8221;

The Trump Administration Just Took A Huge Step Toward Reforming The CFPB

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