The Latest Jobs Report Proves Trump's Theory of the Economy: Tariffs and Deportations Put Money in the Pockets of Working-Class Americans
Economists and Liberal Media Hardest Hit
The economists were wrong—again!
January’s jobs report is out, and it’s pretty much all good news: The U.S. economy added 130,000 jobs in January, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.3 percent. Wages are up and the number of people working part-time because they can’t find full time work is down. The number of jobs added in the private sector is even higher—172,000—offset by cuts to federal jobs. (For small government folks, that’s a win-win.)
Remember in April when the economists were prognosticating doom and gloom? When they told you the tariffs would be massively inflationary and cause immense job losses? When they predicted that deporting illegal labor would destroy the economy, which everyone knows requires a surf caste to keep down costs?
This was one of the rationales behind President Biden’s open border. Republicans think it was about getting illegal aliens to vote, but it’s really about economics: The Democrats are now the party of the rich, and their base of wealthy, over-credentialed elites are the consumers of the low wage labor of illegal aliens.
How do I know it’s about labor?
When Biden’s DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was hauled before the Senate, he routinely bemoaned the lack of cheap labor plaguing poor American corporations. He of course denied the border was open, but Mayorkas would also almost always say the quiet part out loud: American corporations need more cheap labor.
At one such hearing in March of 2023, Mayorkas was asked about the national security threat that the open border posed. He countered that it was an "economic security threat" that American corporations are so desperate for workers.
“We have employers who are striving to find people who could fill jobs to contribute to our country’s economic prosperity,” Mayorkas said. “Regrettably, our legal immigration system is not designed to meet that need of employers here in the U.S., despite the fact that individuals from other countries want to come here to work—even seasonally, even temporarily, earn the money they can bring back to their home countries and support their families.”
This is why the man who was supposed to secure our border opened it: “Our legal immigration system is not designed to meet that need of employers here in the U.S.” “We have employers who are striving to find people who could fill jobs.”
Of course, what he means is employers striving to find people to fill jobs for those wages. Hence the need for illegal labor. With Mayorkas’ help, Biden sought to fill the endless, rapacious need that corporate America has for cheap labor that undercuts a living wage for American workers. Together, they effectively colluded with the cartels to import a surf caste of 10-15 million.
Trump was elected to reverse all that—not just the chaos of the open border and the dangers presented by illegal criminals, but to reverse the Democrats whole economic paradigm in which you ship good jobs to China and import people enslaved to cartels to do the jobs remaining here. Trump’s theory of the case was that if we deport the illegals and impose tariffs, American corporations would have to hire Americans and build stuff here.
Of course, the elites laughed and laughed. They predicted economic ruin. You can’t bring jobs back! You can’t sustain an economy while paying Americans a living wage!
Turns out, they were wrong!
Turns out, when you deport 500,000 people and 2 million more voluntarily go home, Americans line up for the jobs they were doing—and companies have to pay them more, because a tight labor market is always good for workers.
Turns out, when you impose tariffs, corporations do a funny thing: They build factories here at home. They reshore supply chains. They make things in America. Manufacturing jobs are up by 5,000 in the new January report.
That’s what this jobs report represents: Trump’s theory of the case was right.
As E.J. Antoni pointed out on Twitter, throughout Trump’s first year in office, the employment of native-born Americans grew by nearly 1 million, while the number of foreign born workers employed fell by nearly 100,000.
The average American's weekly paycheck shrunk by 4 percent under Biden—but fully half of that has been recovered in just the first year of Trump’s second term, surging 2 percent.
The even better news is that this job growth in January came from full-time jobs, with just 5 percent coming from part-time work. It means Americans are entering the workforce in good jobs with solid pay and benefits, not precarious gig work, as E.J. pointed out.
You know the numbers are good for the President by the absence of coverage in the liberal medial. You’d better believe if the report was bad, it would be wall-to-wall coverage.
Batya, I don’t believe I (or many people) thought of illegal immigration as harming American workers until you wrote about it in “Second Class.” Thank you for caring about the people the elites don’t care about by telling their stories. Keep it up! 👊 🫡
Typo alert: ‘serf’ caste, not ‘surf’