President Donald Trump is sticking with his tariffs, despite new data published Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that the country added roughly 1 million fewer jobs than previously reported over the past year.
Under former President Joe Biden, and even during the early months of the second Trump administration, government officials pointed to a strong American labor market as the single greatest indicator that inflation and middling economic growth were not driving the country into a recession.
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However, on Tuesday, the BLS announced that the economy added roughly 850,000 jobs between March of last year and March 2025, some 910,000 fewer jobs than previously reported.
Trump has received four consecutive underwhelming jobs reports. BLS announced last Friday that the economy shed jobs for the first time since 2020 in June and that the U.S. has lost some 42,000 manufacturing jobs since the president announced his “reciprocal” tariff agenda in April.
“The president is committed to his policies because his policies are working,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Washington Examiner during Tuesday’s briefing when asked if the new BLS data has the president second-guessing his tariffs. “There have been a lot of people fearmongering about inflation in this room, but it just has not come to fruition on a monthly basis. CPI inflation has now come in at or below the market’s expectation for six consecutive months.”
Leavitt didn’t address the job losses directly but focused on inflation, which has begun to slow during Trump’s first eight months in office but remains above the Federal Reserve’s target rate of a 2% annual price increase.
Meanwhile, Trump’s economic approval rating, registered as high as 12 points positive heading into Inauguration Day, has steadily declined since April to nearly 13 points underwater as of Tuesday, according to the RealClearPolitics aggregate.
“Every month that President Trump has been in office, overall inflation has run at a 1.9% average pace in the president’s first six months in office. If I would have told all of you that in January, you would not have believed me. But those are the facts, and those are the numbers, and we also see many other positive signs and economic indicators,” she continued.
Still, Trump and his top economic stewards have slightly amended their messaging in recent weeks, suggesting that the full effect of Trump’s policies won’t be felt until next year, compared to the president’s campaign promise to end inflation on his first day in office.
Leavitt declined to say Tuesday when asked when Americans can expect economic data to reflect positive gains spurred by Trump’s policies, as opposed to the lingering effect of Biden’s economic stewardship.
“Well, first, we need accurate numbers. We need truthful and honest data, which is why the president took the monumental step to try and appoint and confirm new leadership at the BLS so we can have data that we can actually rely on,” she claimed. “Number one, the president was right, and this is why we need new leadership at the Fed, and this makes it very clear that President Trump inherited a much worse economy by the Biden administration than ever reported. And it also proves that the Federal Reserve is holding our monetary policy rates are too high.”
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You can watch Leavitt’s briefing in full below.
