Trump Business Director Lutnick blames the economy | Real Time Headlines

Business Secretary Howard Lutnik Wednesday argued that former president Joe Biden – Not his boss, president Donald Trump – The recent negatives should be blamed Economical Data and plunge in stock price.

Lutnik said in an interview: “The president talked about it last night Bloomberg TV. “He said Biden gave him a bunch of poop.”

“He gave him a lot of the economy (Trump) trying to solve,” Lutnik said.

Trump is in a address arrive Joint Congressional Meeting Biden left him with “economic disaster” and “nightmare of inflation”, he said Tuesday night.

In fact, the U.S. economy has grown by 2.8% over the past year, with inflation in December at 2.9%, well below its 40-year high of 9.1% in June 2022.

Lutnick’s comment is on Bloomberg New tariffs In Canada and Mexico, economic growth and stock prices will cease.

“You are looking for Biden data,” Lutnik retorted.

“Don’t try to beat my President Trump with Biden’s nonsense,” Lutnik said.

“We were in mid-March,” he said. “My president took over January 20. Do you think the economic data released in early March is related to Donald Trump?”

“Come on. You have to be kidding me.” “Stop it, stop it, stop it.”

Lutnick said about whether he thinks the troublesome economic data is misleading, saying: “I think the data gives you the idea that if Joe Biden is still in charge, you’re in trouble.”

“But you have a new president, you have a new sheriff,” Lutnik said. “You’re going to see investments, you’re already seeing trillions of dollars in manufacturing that have moved to the United States.”

Earlier Wednesday Payroll Processing Company ADP The company added just 77,000 new workers in February, well below the upward revised figure of 186,000 workers in January, almost half of what the Dow Jones consensus estimates are.

The benchmark Dow Jones industrial average fell by more than 1,300 points on Monday and Tuesday.

Also on Monday Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank The released forecast requires GDP to fall by 2.8% in the first quarter of 2025, down from -1.5% last week. Atlanta Fed’s GDPNOW estimate in mid-February is expected to rise (rather than fall) 2.3%

Last week, Conference Committee The report said that “consumer confidence dropped sharply in February” in the United States, Trump’s first full month at the White House. The 7-point drop is the biggest drop in consumer confidence since August 2021.

Wednesday is not the first time Lutnick has tried to distance himself between Trump’s White House and his unloved economic data.

On Sunday, he suggested that the government could change its list of GDP.

“You know governments have screwed up with GDP in history,” Lutnick said on Fox News. “They see government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate the two and make it transparent.”

This idea is quick Been thrown economist. Taking government spending as a basic measure of the “basic measure of the health of the U.S. economy” in separate categories of consumer spending in GDP calculations. this Associated Press Famous.

However, the idea has at least one compelling fan: Elon Musk.

Musk’s Ministry of Efficiency is conducting a crusade to narrow the federal government’s labor force and its budget.

“Otherwise, you can expand your GDP by spending money on things that won’t make people’s lives better,” Musk wrote.

Lutnick’s suggestion is that economic data is open to political revisions and is part of a wider Trump administration campaign targeting government data collection and dissemination.

Last week, Lutnick dissolved two expert committees that worked with the government to produce economic statistics Reuters Report Tuesday.

One of them is the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee, which helped generate data on inflation, employment and GDP.