Earlier this week, Peter Navarro, a leading White House voice on trade and economic policy, appeared on Fox News and insisted that the U.S. economy is “perfect.” In fact, during the same on-air comments, Navarro described the economic conditions in the first year of Donald Trump’s second term as the best since 1998, dovetailing with the president’s near-constant insistence that the domestic economy has literally never been as healthy as it is now.
The rhetoric was, by any fair measure, bizarre. Indeed, it was just last week when we learned that job growth in the United States fell to a 16-year low (excluding the 2020 pandemic) after the Republican president returned to power. There’s also extensive public opinion polling that shows most Americans are thoroughly dissatisfied with the nation’s economic conditions.
Describing the status quo as “perfect” reflected a White House that’s so desperate to peddle happy talk that it appears wildly out of touch.
But as the week comes to an end, the latest economic news adds insult to injury. CNBC reported:
Economic growth slowed more than expected near the end of 2025 while inflation held firm, according to data released Friday that could complicate the Federal Reserve’s path on interest rates.
Gross domestic product rose at an annualized rate of just 1.4%, according to Commerce Department numbers released Friday, well below the Dow Jones estimate for a 2.5% gain.
What’s more, we now know that the economy grew at a 2.2% pace across all of 2025 — down from 2.8% in 2024. Excluding the pandemic, 2025 showed the weakest economic growth in the United States in nine years.
In other words, despite endless Republican hype, economic growth and job growth were stronger during Joe Biden’s final year in office compared with the first year of Trump’s second term.
The White House has not yet offered a persuasive explanation as to why the economy got worse after the Republican returned to the Oval Office. Complicating matters are the assurances Americans received from the administration. As recently as August, for example, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confidently predicted to a national television audience that the U.S. economy is “really going to pick up in the fourth quarter” of 2025. So much for that idea. If recent history is any guide, the administration will try to move the goalposts again, but the underlying question for the White House remains the same: As a candidate, Trump promised to deliver immediate, Day 1 results. Why did he fail?
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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