Friday, July 7, 2017

Trump's Big CON: 'I'm the Jobs President'

UPDATE III:  "Mr. Trump himself declared upon taking office that his policies would produce 4 percent annual growth, and just this week said on Twitter to affirm that 'things are starting to kick in now.' . .

But the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s widely followed GDP Now expects the second-quarter growth figure to come in at 2.7 percent, more than a full percentage point below where it was in May, and a decline even since the beginning of the week. The New York Fed’s Nowcast is even more bearish, with an estimate of 1.9 percent for the quarter just ended and 1.6 percent for the current quarter."

Read The New York Times, Hopes of ‘Trump Bump’ for U.S. Economy Shrink as Growth Forecasts Fade.

UPDATE II:  "President Trump is touting data on the economy, telling his supporters that things are getting better for American workers. Not all professional forecasters share that enthusiasm, though, and many of them believe that this is about as good as it is going to get.

According to the average forecast among analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News, U.S. employers combined will add 165,000 workers to their payrolls a month this year, on net. That would be the slowest pace for hiring since 2010. Under President Barack Obama last year, the economy produced an average of 187,000 jobs a month.

When the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes its monthly report on hiring Friday morning with figures for June, data on the labor market will be available for the first half of the year. Through May, the average pace was 162,000 new employees a month.

That is slower than not only last year, but also the year before, when the economy added 226,000 jobs a month on average. In 2015, the monthly pace averaged 250,000."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s job growth nightmare: His first year could be slower than Obama’s last.

UPDATE:  AS A candidate for the White House, Donald Trump blasted the Ford Motor Company for planning to shift production of its leading compact car, the Focus, to Mexico. He even went so far as to threaten a huge tariff on any and all U.S. cars formerly produced in this country that might be exported from Mexico back into the United States. After Mr. Trump’s election, Ford seemed to cave by announcing it would not be building the cars in Mexico after all.

So what are we to make of the surprising facts that Ford now plans to make the Focus in President Trump’s other trade nemesis — China — and that the Trump administration’s response is, essentially, “whatever”? Ford’s move just “shows how flexible multinational companies are in terms of geography,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross observed. You don’t say! . .

Is it too much to hope that the federal government will stop purporting to micromanage specific business-location decisions using either threats or bribes?"

Read the Washington Post, Ford’s shift to China offers the Trump administration a lesson in economics.

"Five months ago at a Boeing factory in South Carolina, President Trump proclaimed, 'We are going to fight for every last American job.'

On Thursday, workers at the North Charleston plant learned they’d soon face layoffs."

Read the Washington Post, Trump visited this Boeing factory to celebrate jobs. It just announced layoffs.

Read also:

Trump's Big CON: "More Coal Jobs", and

Trump's Big CON: Trump Lied About Stopping Jobs From Moving Overseas.

No comments: