Fudging the numbers: Trump’s economy is not what he claims — or wants

In a briefing before his State of the Union address, President Trump claimed that the U.S. has “the greatest economy we’ve ever had.” But most of the economic statistics he cites don’t back up his claim. Indeed, they tell a story he doesn’t want told.

Let’s start with the latest jobs report for February, which showed the economy lost 92,000 jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy lost jobs in six of the last 14 months going back to January 2025. The job-loss numbers so upset Trump last June when the monthly report showed a decline of 20,000 jobs that he fired the commissioner of the Bureau, Erika McEntarfer. Whom will he fire now?

Worse yet, in September 2024, Trump claimed, “We’re going to have a manufacturing boom.” Yet the country lost more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs over Trump’s first year. To be sure, manufacturing jobs had started declining a year before Trump entered office, and several factors are causing that decline. But he claimed his policies, especially his expansive use of tariffs, would reverse that trend. So far, that hasn’t happened. 

The next important economic factor is inflation. In his State of the Union address, Trump asserted, “But in 12 months, my administration has driven core inflation down to the lowest level in more than five years. And in the last three months of 2025, it was down to 1.7 percent.” Calling that claim “misleading” would be generous.

Many economists and reporters said they couldn’t tell where Trump got that number. I think I figured it out: Core inflation was 2.6 percent in both November and December and 2.5 percent in January — down from 3.3 percent in January 2025. Trump cited the last three months of 2025, which would have included October. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not release a figure for October because of the government shutdown. So, apparently Trump’s economists took the 2.6 percent for November and December but divided it by three months instead of two (or else counted October as zero when there was no number), giving an average core inflation rate of 1.7 percent (2.6+2.6 = 5.2 ÷ 3 = 1.7).

Trump could have used the core inflation rate of 3 percent for September, since there was no October number. Or he could have used January’s 2.5 percent, since that was the last month before his speech. Either approach would have provided an honest number. Trump took the dishonest route.

The third issue is the federal deficit, which is the amount the federal government spends more than its revenue in a year. Writing in the Wall Street Journal last January, Trump said. “But with the help of tariffs, we have cut that federal budget deficit by a staggering 27 percent in a single year.”

Let’s see. According to the Treasury Department, the federal budget deficit for 2025 was $1.78 trillion. To have decreased Biden’s 2024 deficit by 27 percent, the deficit would have had to have been about $2.4 trillion. Treasury says it was $1.83 trillion. Biden’s 2023 federal deficit was $1.7 trillion and 2022 was $1.38 trillion — both lower than Trump’s 2025 deficit.

The federal deficit is important because each deficit adds to the total federal debt, which stands at about $38.8 trillion. And the Congressional Budget Office doesn’t see the debt declining or even stabilizing, despite Trump’s claim that he will reduce it. It’s predicting that, under current law, over the next 10 years the annual deficit will grow from $1.85 trillion in 2026 to $3.1 trillion by 2036, leaving the country with a $56 trillion debt. And that’s before the financial fallout from the war with Iran and its aftermath.

And finally, there’s the U.S. trade deficit, which most economists don’t consider an important indicator. But it has long been the most important economic factor for Trump.

In his Wall Street Journal article cited above, Trump writes, “we have slashed our monthly trade deficit by an astonishing 77 percent — all with virtually no inflation.” We’ve already discredited his “no inflation” claim, but what about the sinking trade deficit?

It appears that Trump has taken the largest monthly trade deficit in 2025 — $136 billion last March — and compared that to the smallest monthly trade deficit, $29 billion last October. The large trade deficit last March was a result of U.S. companies stocking up on foreign-produced inventory in advance of Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs” announcement in April. And the small trade deficit in October may have been partly due to the government shutdown. In other words, he arbitrarily compared the year’s largest monthly deficit to the smallest, both of which were anomalies.

The trade deficit rose to $53 billion in November, and $70 billion in December, the latest posted number — twice the size of the trade deficit just two months earlier, implying a trend that Trump chooses to ignore.

It is extremely important that the public is able trust the economic numbers coming from the president and his economists. Sadly, with this president, the public can’t always do that.

Merrill Matthews is the Texas state chair of Our Republican Legacy.

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