Will Republicans Ever Learn?

 Financial FAQs

“The stakes are enormous if Republicans succeed in removing most of the estimated 11 million undocumented worker (only half of which are from Mexico and the Latin countries), and cut legal immigration in half, as they have promised to do. Economic growth will plummet, since it is mainly based on growth of the working age population, as well as labor productivity, which has also fallen since 2000.” Huffington Post

PEWResearch

Will Republicans ever learn that immigrants have always been the life blood of our economy?

The above quote is from a Huffington Post blog I wrote in 2017, the last time Trump Republicans tried to deport most or all of the 11 million undocumented immigrants.

Nobel economist Paul Krugman has said in a recent Substack blog that the latest unemployment report showed that since January 2025 the economy is estimated to have added 359,000 jobs, down almost 900,000 from job growth the previous year. This indicates that the job market is very close to complete stagnation.

And that means the whole economy could soon be in stagflation that economists have been so worried about—because inflation is still high despite slowing job growth.

Has anything changed in his second term? Yes, President Trump has doubled down on the deportation raids, which has so decimated the jobs market that it is in danger of destroying economic growth for most Americans as well.

Trump is using the lie that undocumented immigrants take jobs away from native-born Americans in ramping up the DHS/ICE assault against almost any immigrant of color, when in fact immigrants not only create more paying jobs, but more consumers that pay taxes as well.

And Trump knows he is lying. His White Christian nationalist-centered policies are tailored to capture most of the economic growth for his oligarchs who hope the $billions they are investing in AI will require fewer human beings. AI and robots don’t pay taxes or go shopping as do the workers that are being replaced.

Barron’s economist Megan Leonhardt highlighted this fact recently, citing the economic planning firm Implan that calculated reducing the immigration population by one million in 2025 reduced GDP by $103.9 billion and eliminated 741,500 potential jobs as compared to 2024 during President Biden’s last year.

“In January 2025, 53.3 million immigrants lived in the United States – the largest number ever recorded. In the ensuing months, however, more immigrants left the country or were deported than arrived. By June, the country’s foreign-born population had shrunk by more than a million people, marking its first decline since the 1960s,” said PEW.

The long-term historical average one-million immigrants per year entering the U.S. have been needed just to keep economic growth at its long-term annual 2 percent real GDP average. And Trump’s State Department has now stopped processing entry visas entirely from 75 countries.

Although the number of adults in the prime working ages of 25 to 64 – 173.2 million in 2015 – will rise to 183.2 million in 2035, according to Pew Research Center projections, the total growth of 10 million over two decades will be lower than the total in any single decade since the Baby Boomers began pouring into the workforce in the 1960s.

What will happen to them? AI means replacing humans with robots that don’t contribute to our retirement systems as well. A country needs to increase its workforce just to finance the retirement benefits for fast-aging population. It’s a truth Republicans have never learned as they continue to support an autocrat who places little value on human lives or the constitution.

And where is most of the economic damage to date? To the farm belt as well as cities in the blue states. Implans reports California, New York, and Texas are most affected, with California having already lost $13.4 billion in GDP and 86,650 fewer jobs. But job losses are occurring in the red states as well. 

Will Republicans ever learn? Immigrants have always been the new blood entering our workforce that has enabled the American economy to grow and renew itself.

Harlan Green © 2026

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

A Better Unemployment Report?

 Financial FAQs

“Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 130,000 in January, and the unemployment rate changed little at 4.3 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in health care, social assistance, and construction, while federal government and financial activities lost jobs.” BLS

FREDpayrolls

The Whitehouse is touting the January jump in nonfarm payrolls, which it claims is evidence Trump’s economic policies are beginning to work. But that ain’t so by a long shot.

It is not a sign of successful policies when this was the first jump from close to zero new hires in a year per the FRED graph of new payroll jobs.

Annual revisions to last year’s payrolls showed just 181,000 new jobs were created in 2025, down from an earlier estimate of 584,000. That means the monthly average job growth in 2025 was only 15,000.

Whereas the Biden economy added 237,000 jobs in December 2024 alone and 1.495 million in all of 2024. So whose economic policies worked better?

The Biden administration had passed almost $5 trillion in new bipartisan legislation that was modernizing the American economy for the first time in 70 years, passing the Infrastructure, Inflation Reduction and CHIPS Acts as well as increasing electric vehicle puirchase incentives,.

And they had even brought down inflation from the 9 percent high incurred during the COVID-19 pandemic to 3 percent where it has been ever since. But it seems enough Americans believed Trump’s lie that he could bring down inflation on “Day one” when it had already happened.

From Trump’s return to power, however, rather than continue to carry out the bipartisan agreements that would prepare our economy for the next century, his obsession to concentrate as much power unto himself and his Billionaire supporters has led him to destroy as much of those bipartisan agreements as possible that would grow the American economy into the next century.

The result is his return to policies of the last century’s Gilded Age of Robber Barons and corruption has been the opposite of what was promised—rising prices, falling employment and increased pollution.

The higher tariffs are the main reason there was such a loss of jobs last year. Employers couldn’t predict the cost of their imported goods because of Trump’s petty spites and mostly illegal executive actions, so they didn’t expand their businesses and hire additional employees.

And health care is now the main sector hiring new workers, not only because of America’s aging population but because Trump’s policies are making Americans sicker. There have been so many cuts to our healthcare grants and loss of medical experts in the CDC and elsewhere that even measles outbreaks are becoming a problem.

As has been the case for more than a year, health care accounted for more than half of job gains in January, adding 82,000 positions. Construction gained 33,000 jobs, but most other sectors were flat, and the federal government shed another 35,000 positions.

But lastly will be the toll that Trump’s indiscriminate roundup of undocumented immigrants will do to our food supply. I mentioned recently that according to a Michigan State study cited by The Idaho Capital Sun, more than half of surveyed farmers said in 2021 that they were experiencing some sort of worker shortage, It found that when domestic farm employment declines by 10%, food prices of labor-intensive crops increase by around 3%

The number of private payroll jobs will continue to shrink and who really believes that AI, or Chat GDP, or robots can replace real workers anytime in the near future?

Harlan Green © 2026

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Retail Sales Slump

Financial FAQs

“Retail trade sales were virtually unchanged (±0.5 percent)* from November 2025, and up 2.1 percent (±0.5 percent) from last year. Nonstore retailers were up 5.3 percent (±1.4 percent) from last year, while food service and drinking places were up 4.7 percent (±1.8 percent) from December 2024.” Census Bureau

FREDretailsales

This FRED graph shows best what tariffs have done to consumer spending, which powers 70 percent of economic activity, let us not forget. Retail sales fizzled in December as I feared would happen in my November retail report, rising just 2.1 percent annually. And retail sales don’t take inflation into account, so consumers weren’t keeping up with the rising prices.

Sales had declined or were barely positive in six of 11 months through November 2025, I said then. So why wouldn’t consumers turn even more cautious with almost no new payroll jobs. The latest Labor Department JOLTS report showed that as many people were leaving jobs as were hired—so zero net new jobs were added to the workforce, in other words.

This means the economy is steadily shrinking for most Americans because of the disastrous and largely ineffectual tariff policies that have increased import taxes, therefore higher inflation, the opposite of Trump’s promise to bring down prices on ‘Day One”.

The FRED graph shows just how consumers timed their purchases with the tariffs. Sales had plunged in May when the April 2 retaliatory tariffs were announced on all 180 countries in the world, some mostly inhabited by birds. Then Trump’s TACO tactics kicked in postponing them for 60 days, then raising them again when countries refused to meet his deadline for deals.

Also, November was the last month consumers splurged for the holidays so annual sales dropped from 3.1 percent to just 2.1 percent in just one month, when annual retail sales usually increase from 3-6 percent in good times.

My guess is that the AI build out of new energy centers won’t help inflation for a long time, if ever, or create many jobs in the near future, So Trump is saying we must lower interest rates to boost some growth and keep consumers happy. But inflation may not behave since concentrating so much wealth in AI investment with little return to show for it in the near term, may raise inflation.

Or, what will consumers ultimately do if Trump can’t stop playing the tariff game in his attempt to twist arms to achieve his ultimate goal of dominating friends and neighbors rather than cooperating with them?

The Trumper bet is that this year will bring more consumer benefits with the Fed’s new Chairman in May wanting to push interest rates lower as well as the tax breaks in Repub’s Big Beautiful Tax Bill.

In Nobel economist Paul Krugman’s words, “So am I saying that the argument that AI justifies rate cuts is dishonest, that AI has become the last refuge of scoundrels? Why yes, I am.”

So what could go wrong?

Harlan Green © 2026

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Why the job Losses?

 Popular Economics Weekly

“The number of job openings continued to trend down to 6.5 million in December, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the month, both hires and total separations were little changed at 5.3 million each. Within separations, quits (3.2 million) were unchanged while layoffs and discharges (1.8 million) were little changed.” BLS

FRED/JOLTS

The Labor Department’s JOLTS report is another survey showing little or net job growth. That happens when the number of layoffs equals the number of hires (both hires and total separations—losses—were 5.3 million in December).

Alarm bells are ringing because it was the last this low during the worldwide economic COVID-19 pandemic (January 2021).

So now we must wait for the postponed official U.S. Labor Department unemployment report to know if we are slowly sinking into a job recession.

But workers can already see what is happening with their own eyes rather than listen to White House bromides that the economy must eventually get better. The private outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said U.S.-based companies announced 108,435 layoffs in January, up sharply from the prior month. It was the biggest tally for the month of January since 2009.

“Generally, we see a high number of job cuts in the first quarter, but this is a high total for January. It means most of these plans were set at the end of 2025, signaling employers are less-than-optimistic about the outlook for 2026,” said Andy Challenger, workplace expert and chief revenue officer for Challenger, Gray & Christmas.”

It is up 205% from the 35,553 job cuts announced in December. January’s total is the highest for the month since 2009, when 241,749 job cuts were announced. It is the highest monthly total since October 2025, when 153,074 cuts were recorded.

There’s another reason companies have stopped hiring more workers than they are losing. They are waiting for the Supreme Court decision on whether the tariffs are legal that are making many of their products more expensive.

Trump’s executive orders are not laws, unless approved by congress. And congress has said they can be enacted if there’s a national emergency. A scarcity of strategic metals is an emergency whose imports can be taxed, but not coffee and every other product that Americans use every day because Trump doesn’t like that particular government.

What are the other culprits preventing job creation? Artificial Intelligence (AI) was cited for 7,624 job cuts in January, 7% of total cuts for the month. Companies referenced AI for 54,836 announced layoff plans in 2025. Since 2023, when this reason was first tracked, AI has been cited in 79,449 job cut announcements, 3% of all layoff plans announced in that period.

“It’s difficult to say how big an impact AI is having on layoffs specifically. We know leaders are talking about AI, many companies want to implement it in operations, and the market appears to be rewarding companies that mention it,” said Challenger.

Tariffs were cited for 294 job cuts in January, after causing 7,908 cuts in 2025.”

That is more sobering news. What will happen to the workers being laid off? Trump has cut back or cancelled many of the infrastructure programs that President Biden enacted in the Infrastructure, Inflation Reduction and CHIPs Acts that would employ these workers in sectors that are intended to modernize our economy.

But no, Trump wants to return to a fossil-fueled economy that is no longer growing (and is in fact losing workers). Republicans don’t seem to have a clue to the horrendous damage he is doing in turning back the clock to a distant era that no longer exists. It was called the Gilded Age and existed in the 1890s.

But the stock market is rallying to record highs with the DOW up 1200 at this writing. Yes, that's all due to the capital spending for new AI infrastructure. But it's creating jobs for robots, not humans.

Back to the 1890s? That can’t be done either, of course, and Americans are already seeing the results.

Harlan Green © 2026

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Where Are the Jobs--Part II?

 Financial FAQs

“Job creation took a step back in 2025, with private employers adding 398,000 jobs, down from 771,000 in 2024. While we've seen a continuous and dramatic slowdown in job creation for the past three years, wage growth has remained stable.” ADP

FREDpayrolls

The FRED (St. Louis Federal Reserve) graph tells it all. Job formation has almost disappeared in the Trump economy. It’s not only the shutdowns, which have delayed the official U.S. unemployment report that was due for January, but past months as well, so private payroll data processors like ADP fill in the knowledge gap.

But we know from the latest FRED graph of private payroll hiring that private employers are barely hiring. Just 74,000 jobs were created in November 2025 and 22,000 in January, as reported by ADP.

So the GDP growth spurts last fall 2025 are from the $ trillions being invested in AI energy centers, not in corporations expanding their workforce. Corporations are laying off workers instead.

The best examples are Amazon and now the Washington Post. The NYTimes just reported that the Washington Post told employees on Wednesday that it was beginning a widespread round of layoffs “that are expected to decimate the organization’s sports, local news and international coverage.

“The company is laying off about 30 percent of all its employees, according to two people with knowledge of the decision. That includes people on the business side and more than 300 of the roughly 800 journalists in the newsroom, the people said,” said the NYTimes

CBS News reports that in 2025, companies directly pointed to their use of AI in announcing 55,000 job cuts — more than 12 times the number of layoffs attributed to AI just two years earlier, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas. Of those job losses, 51,000 were in tech, with most of the cuts concentrated in tech-heavy states such as California and Washington.

The main culprit are the tariffs that Trump is using to coerce concessions from foreign governments, but it is doing the most damage to Americans. U.S. vehicle sales plunged in January, for example. Automobile sales increased at an annual rate of 14.9 million in January, down 7% from 16.1 million in the final month of 2025, according to Wards Intelligence and profit losses of $billions have already been reported by GM and Ford due to the higher tariffs on aluminum and steel.

Consumers above all are reacting to the sudden changes in the employment picture. The Conference Board voiced their concerns in the headlineConfidence collapsed to lowest point since 2014, surpassing pandemic depths: “The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index® fell by 9.7 points in January to 84.5 (1985=100), from an upwardly revised 94.2 in December. A 5.1-point upward revision to December’s reading of the Index resulted in a slight increase last month, reversing the initially reported decline. However, January’s preliminary results showed confidence resumed declining after a one-month uptick.

So unemployed workers are now suffering under both the rising inflation from the tariffs and AI replacing many of their jobs.

It’s not a pretty picture, while we are still waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on whether most of Trump’s tariffs are even legal. It much safer to do nothing in such circumstances—consumers to hold on to their savings and employers to replace their workers with more technology.

Harlan Green © 2026

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

President Trump the Bully

 Answering Kennedy’s Call

 “With yesterday’s tragic news, we are calling for an immediate deescalation of tensions and for state, local and federal officials to work together to find real solutions.” Letter signed by 60 Minnesotan CEOs

CNBC.com

It has taken the ICE killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti for Minnesotan CEOs — among the most powerful and wealthiest Americans, says CNBC — to cause President Trump to blink, to back down from the Storm Trooper tactics of his immigration police in Minneapolis.

Minnesotans and the American public are learning how to counter what they are seeing with their own eyes, the real Donald Trump. His actions and those of his followers are the behavior of bullies, led by a megalomaniac with a very limited attention span and unlimited need for attention in the words of Mary Trump, his niece and a Clinical Psychologist, whose single-minded purpose is to gather as much wealth and power to himself as possible.

     It is a bully mentality that has infected Trump’s MAGA followers and leaders of the Republican Party as well, which sometimes takes tragedies such as happened in Milwaukee to open our eyes. There is little mystery to his actions.

Donald Trump’s success in business, such as it is, was due to his bullying tactics that browbeat investors and lenders to such an extent that he could no longer rely on U.S. investors and banks to finance his projects, but came to rely on Russian oligarchs instead who needed to hide their wealth from the Russian people.

Such a mentality has led to increased bullying in schools since the COVID-19 pandemic, and even gun violence. It is a mentality that attempts to impose a bully's version of reality on the real world for the sole purpose of domination.

Evidence of Trump's bullying behavior also comes from the exaggerated use of his hands, which is the body language and mannerisms of a bully reports Groff Beattle, a professor of Psychology at Edge Hill University who specializes in gestures,.

Also comments such as "mentally sick", "dummy", "looser" or "looked disgusting" are all examples of bullying language on Trump's Truth Social site. Furthermore, he has mocked the disability of reporter Serge Kovaleski, portrayed immigrants and foreigners as dangerous people, rapists or "criminal aliens", and demonstrated a significant lack of respect for women generally.

How does one oppose such destructive behavior? First, remember that bullies will prey on the weakest, and avoid confrontation with those stronger because of their own insecurities. Trump preyed on naïve students and the elderly in his Trump University scam. And he stiffed workers and employees when building his Trump Casinos either by paying them less than was contractually agreed to, or not at all via numerous bankruptcies.

It is a lesson NATO members at DAVOS have just learned that is being reflected in their speeches as they search for other countries to move their businesses.

Combine it with what many Psychologists have termed Trump’s Malignant Narcissism, a particularly dangerous form that means he will do anything, break any law to get his way.

Trump is now supporting Central and South American regimes backed by drug cartels in pardoning former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was serving a 40-year sentence for drug trafficking.

In standing up to what has proven to be a soulless, amoral administration Minnesotans are fighting for more than their own state, they are fighting to prevent a world that President Trump and his oligarchs want to restore in South and Central America for their own benefit by supporting right wing narco-states that have as little regard for life.

Harlan Green © 2026

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

A Better Economy for Whom?

 Financial FAQs

“Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 4.4 percent in the third quarter of 2025 (July, August, and September), according to the updated estimate released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the second quarter, real GDP increased 3.8 percent.” BEA.gov

FREDgdp

The U.S. economy is growing again. Why, when polls show that a majority of Americans are unhappy with the economy and their standard of living? Because this measure of growth doesn’t answer what every day Americans need.

The U.S. standard measure for overall economic health, Real Domestic Product (GDP), grew in the second and third quarter of 2025, despite the inflation surge from President Trump’s tariffs. In fact, rising inflation is probably boosting growth at the top for major corporations because higher prices usually mean higher profits for businesses, (but not consumers).

Q3 GDP growth increased in part because consumers could continue to spend. Spending was up 3.5 percent. This is despite the higher tariffs on almost all imports entering the U.S, which caused the GDP measure of overall inflation to rise 3.4 percent, which is too high.

GDP growth is soaring at the moment for a chosen few, in other words. But most Americans are unhappy with the high prices and inflation tied to tariffs. They no longer believe Trump’s fiction that exporters or Americans will eat the cost of the price hikes from the tariff taxes.

The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, known as the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index, also rose to a yearly rate of 2.8% in November, said the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That was up from 2.7% in October with the 12-month rate of core inflation up to 2.8% in November from 2.7%.

So will consumers continue to spend as much going into the New Year? We already know that most consumers are in a very sour mood. The Conference Board’s latest Consumer Confidence survey headline said it best: Confidence collapsed to lowest point since 2014, surpassing pandemic depths.

“Confidence collapsed in January, as consumer concerns about both the present situation and expectations for the future deepened,” said Dana M Peterson, Chief Economist, The Conference Board. “All five components of the Index deteriorated, driving the overall Index to its lowest level since May 2014 (82.2)—surpassing its COVID-19 pandemic depths.”

That is alarming, needless to say. Year 2014 was when confidence was even lower than even the COVID-19 confidence deaths because it was during the Republican’s “no compromise” government shutdown that was meant to oppose President Obama’s agenda of improving ordinary American lives via such programs as Obamacare. It was for more than 30 days—what was then the longest shut down in history.

Is this a repeat performance should congress not agree on a new budget before the end of February?

Exports also helped to boost growth because they have been increasing as well. This might be because of higher labor productivity, i.e., fewer workers are producing more. Amazon has announced it is planning to lay off 30,000 corporate employees, for instance. AI is already replacing workers in industrial and transportation industries, hence the low hire rate being seen after last October’s government shut down. All eyes will be on the labor market in upcoming months.

With only 50,000 new payroll jobs in November, Americans are frustrated by the difficulty in finding jobs. Some also mentioned more costly healthcare and insurance as well in the Confidence Board survey.

And now the blatant lies of President Trump in his attempt to cover up the murders of American citizens by ICE in Minneapolis is sowing even more chaos. No country can continue to grow for long amid such uncertainty.

The high GDP growth numbers and record Wall Street stock indexes won’t convince most Americans that all is well when they see the opposite with their own eyes. That is not the way to run a country, as I’ve been saying.

Harlan Green © 2026

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen