Mixed economic data puts Trump’s agenda at risk

President Donald Trump received some rosy news on Friday morning when the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its report showing that the US economy added 177,000 jobs in April.

This came the month that Trump announced his “liberation day” tariffs, which he eventually paused while still keeping an across-the-board 10 percent tariff and a whopping overall 145 per cent tariff on China. Not surprisingly, the president took the moment to gloat.

“Gasoline just broke $1.98 a gallon, lowest in years, groceries (and eggs!) down, energy down, mortgage rates down, employment strong, and much more good news, as Billions of Dollars pour in from Tariffs,” the president said on Truth Social.

Of course, gas is nowhere near as low as $1.98 a gallon. There is little evidence that the United States has raked in billions of tariff dollars, and while oil dropped to below $60 a barrel on Friday, that can also be a cause for alarm that demand is down.

For the bad developments, Trump repeated his blame of Joe Biden made earlier this week amid news that America’s gross domestic product shrank during the first quarter of 2025. He also repeated his desire for Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to lower interest rates.

“Just like I said ... we’re only in a TRANSITION STAGE, just getting started!!! Consumers have been waiting for years to see pricing come down. NO INFLATION, THE FED SHOULD LOWER ITS RATE!!!” he urged.

That won’t likely sway Powell when the Federal Open Market Committee meets next week to determine what to do with interest rates. The positive toplines allow Trump to say that the stock market has not suffered as much as people thought it would due to his tariffs. But a look under the hood shows a number of alarming indicators for the economy in the coming months.

First, for all the talk about Trump implementing tariffs to revive manufacturing, the number of hours worked in manufacturing declined. Manufacturing also lost 1,000 jobs altogether, with manufacturing of cars and car parts shedding 4,700 jobs. The number of long-term unemployed people, defined as people out of work for at least half of a year, also grew by 179,000 workers.

The jobs report also does not fully account for all of the slashes in jobs by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. April showed that 9,000 people who work for the federal government lost their jobs, but does not count people on paid leave or who are still receiving severance.

And while the jobs report is treated as holy writ on Wall Street, subsequent reports almost always show the numbers revised up or down. In this case, the bureau revised the number of jobs added in February down by 15,000 from 117,000 jobs to 102,000. It revised the March number from 228,000 down to 185,000 jobs.

The whipsaw erratic nature of Trump’s approach to tariffs makes markets even more jittery because they’re not able to game out the economic environment in the United States.

More than that, the blinking red lights indicated the economy could be running out of gas. And it could not come at a worse time for Trump. Trump’s approval rating has continued to drop, mostly because of his economic policies.

At the same time, Congress is trying to pass his “one big, beautiful bill,” which includes increased spending for security at the US-Mexico border, extending the 2017 tax cuts he signed and more oil drilling. But Republicans in the House remain split on how to find $1.5 trillion in spending cuts to pay for the massive $4.5 trillion in tax cuts.

Already, it’s caused a split between MAGA Republicans in the House led by the House Freedom Caucus versus some of Trump’s most devoted followers in the Senate, like Josh Hawley, who fear that cuts to Medicaid will hurt their constituents.

Senator Susan Collins, the chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee who faces re-election in 2026, told The Independent she specifically wanted to protect Medicaid because it supports rural hospitals. Trump’s former consigliere Steve Bannon warned as much on his War Room podcase back in February. “A lot of MAGA is on Medicaid,” Bannon cautioned. “I’m telling you, If you don’t think so, you are dead wrong.”

For all the flash-bang of Trump’s first 100 days, he has been noticeably lean in terms of signing big-ticket items. But if his party is seen as cutting vital services — including those that his most devoted supporters use — just as unemployment is about to fall off a cliff and inflation skyrockets, his second presidency might be in jeopardy before it even begins.