Consumer confidence slipped in September by just a bit, inflation is consistently in the 3% range, while housing prices are falling. The biggest negative factor is that the 3% inflation rate is hitting food and other costs of living harder than it is other areas, which means that Mr. Trump has not resolved one of his primary promises, and that was to end food inflation, in other words, decreasing prices at the supermarket, or at least holding them steady.
The New York Times did an analysis of manufacturing on several different levels, and the statistics demonstrated that there was a resurgence in manufacturing during Mr. Biden’s term, which has turned downward during Mr. Trump’s term, with all other indicators confirming that manufacturing is not growing in the United States, even in light of some of the purported large investments by foreign governments, which are promises at this juncture, in order to secure favorable trade agreements. This is in part due to the fact that some of these promises likely will not come to fruition in the near term, in fact, it is unlikely, and thus, there is no direct impact on the economy, although the stories make great headlines. The fact that there has been a declining number of people willing to work in manufacturing, as I reported on earlier, and tariffs negatively impacting raw material imports, the overall manufacturing sector is in fact shrinking. Mr. Trump’s goal in the utilization of tariffs is, as he states it, to bring manufacturing back to the United States. It looks like he fails on this one too.
Mr. Johnson continues to keep the House out of session in order to avoid swearing in the new Democratic Representative from New Mexico, and one can only surmise that Mr. Johnson has inside information about the negative contents of the Epstein files, meaning there is negative information about Mr. Trump. There is no other rational reason. In some sense it is not so bad for Democrats if that is the case, because at some point well before the mid-term elections, this information will come out, and it is likely to cause an uproar with MAGA. They don’t particularly like pedophiles.
Mr. Trump’s promise as to Gaza seems to be working generally, although there have some been some slips, and some turns, and some surprises, but looks like it might be holding. Except for the fact that Hamas has been reconstituting itself and has not given up its arms, and really until that happens, we have not moved the ball significantly forward. The Ukraine also continues to be confusing, and I think Mr. Trump promised that on day 1 he would solve that problem. Clearly, we are well beyond day 1 and it is nowhere near ending.
China and the United States recently indicated that a deal had been reached which involved, a standstill if you will, for a year, but Mr. Trump added as an incentive to the Chinese to reduce tariffs by 10%, with a Chinese promise that they would not hold back on rare earth mineral sales. They also made that same promise a year ago and didn’t keep it, which is what brought us back to this position. It appears Mr. Trump continues to be stumped by the Chinese and outmaneuvered, and that apparently is going to continue for some period of time.
The FBI director was furious about reports of him spending $60 million dollars on an airplane flight to go on a date. This is the type of petulant activity which one expects from an immature high schooler. He gets caught and he screams, and he also fired the head of that department who was a long-standing FBI agent.
More layoffs are coming as a number of corporations have announced significant numbers of at least corporate employees who are being terminated. In other words, the white-collar workforce. This is obviously further evidence of the softening of the labor market.
Long term support for older folks, in other words, things like home care and nursing home care are becoming a larger and large issue for a couple of reasons. The first is cost is going up, and second, there is a shortage of people to work in these environments. It is in fact very difficult work, but as the number of people are deported it is proportionally decreasing those available to do this work which has been ongoing for many, many generations. This is another problem that Mr. Trump and his administration are not facing and are going to have to, as I pointed out before, at some point deal with the fact that we are not going to have enough immigrants to do the kind of work that immigrants do – agricultural work, gardening, and other services that are difficult jobs that Americans will not do.
Then of course, we have the SNAP fiasco along with the health insurance issues. The Republicans are not facing the fact that many of the people who are going to lose food assistance are in red states. The same is true of those receiving assistance relative to health insurance through Obamacare. Nonetheless, they are fighting tooth and nail not to negotiate and I suspect that that is going to continue for some period of time. Hopefully the Democrats will be able to hold out, although they are experiencing much pressure from a variety of sources to relent, but there is no way the Republicans are going to negotiate if the government opens.
Bill Owens is a former member of Congress representing the New York 21st, a partner in Stafford, Owens, Piller, Murnane, Kelleher and Trombley in Plattsburgh, NY and a Strategic Advisor at Dentons to Washington, DC.
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