MANCHESTER, New Hampshire — Billionaire and national 2016 GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump pushed back on the notion put forth by President Barack Obama that America is doing well economically.
In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News on Friday, Trump laid out how he believes the United States is currently in another recession—something that proves President Obama’s economic policies have failed, as have those of his GOP enablers in Congress.
“I think you’re sort of in a recession now, you’re certainly in a jobs recession now,” Trump said when asked to react to a new report from the Financial Times detailing the potential rising risk of a new recession. “We have millions of people out of work, and the jobs they have are bad jobs. We’re in a bubble. We’re in a bubble. The sad part is it may not pop now, it may pop two weeks into the new administration and the new administration will be blamed for it. One of those things, right? But we’re in a bubble and it’s going to be ugly.”
The Financial Times piece, written by John Authers, details how there is a rising risk of another major recession in the United States.
“The dollar is falling sharply, while the market bets ever more confidently that there will be no rate increases from the Federal Reserve in 2016,” Authers wrote. “This is driven by a rising belief that the U.S. could be slipping into a recession this year — a possibility that only a few weeks ago was regarded as negligible. In response, brokerages and investment banks have started to pump out research, trying to assess the risk of a recession. Almost universally, they conclude that the risks remain low — but that they are rising.”
In January, according to another report from CNBC, layoffs in the United States surged to a six-month high of 75,114. Asked to respond to that news, Trump said that it’s foreign nations like China, Japan, and Mexico—and Ireland, which is taking pharmaceutical giant Pfizer away from the United States now—that are to blame. Under a President Trump, he says, this job drain is going to be plugged. Trump said:
We’re going to bring our jobs back, we have to bring our jobs back. We’re losing our jobs to Mexico and China and Japan and every country. Everybody is taking our jobs. We have an open policy on losing jobs. And we have to bring our jobs back—the jobs we have, that phony 5.2 percent, the jobs that we have are terrible jobs. They’re considered bad jobs. We’re going to bring the jobs back, and it’s not even going to be hard. We’re going to lower taxes and get these companies to start coming back here. We’re losing companies. Pfizer is leaving now, you know, Pfizer, because taxes are too high. Many companies are leaving the United States—and I’m going to stop it. I will stop that very quickly.
On Friday morning, news broke from MarketWatch that U.S. exports fell in 2015 — the first time exports from the U.S. fell since the last recession — and that the U.S. trade deficit has risen 2.7 percent in December, 2015 alone.
“It shows you where we’re going,” Trump said in response to the breaking news. “We’re going in the wrong direction. We’re a debtor nation and we’re going to get worse and worse. We’re losing our jobs. We’re losing our businesses. They’re leaving. And I’ll stop it.”
The MarketWatch report painted a grim picture of the U.S. economy on the world stage.
MarketWatch’s Jeffry Bartash wrote on Friday morning:
The nation’s trade deficit rose 2.7% in December as exports fell again, capping the first year since 2009 in which U.S. exports have declined. The U.S. trade gap increased to a seasonally adjusted $43.4 billion from $42.2 billion in November, government data show. That was in line with the MarketWatch forecast. U.S. exports dipped 0.3% to $181.5 billion. They fell 4.8% in 2015 to mark the largest decline since the final year of the Great Recession. Exports have tumbled because of a weak global economy and a strong dollar that’s made American-supplied goods and services more expensive. The worsened trade picture contributed to slower U.S. economic growth in the second half of 2015.
Imports rose 0.3% to $224.9 billion in December. They decreased 3.1% in 2015, largely reflecting lower costs of imported oil. For the full year, the U.S. trade deficit climbed 4.6% to $531.5 billion compared with 2014.”
Trump’s interview with Breitbart News on this topic of the U.S. economy, his biggest strength because of his business background — and on trade and immigration policy, covered already in previous articles — came as President Obama painted a different picture about the U.S. economy on Friday. The official U.S. unemployment rate, numbers announced Friday show, fell to 4.9 percent as U.S. employers added 151,000 jobs.
Obama himself took a victory lap Friday, declaring that his policies have taken America back from the financial brink that loomed in the recession he rode into the White House.
“We should be proud of the progress we have made,” Obama said at the White House press briefing. “We have recovered from the worst economic crisis since the 1930s.”
But Trump doesn’t see it that way. He thinks America’s economy is on the brink of another crash and is warning people that his business acumen is what’s needed to fix it.
“I’ve employed tens of thousands of people over the years,” Trump replied when asked why he’s better to fix the broken economy than anyone else in either political party. “I’ve built an unbelievable company. You saw how good it is when I did my filings. I built an unbelievable company. I have done an amazing job with employment, with healthcare, with education for my employees. The greatest assets anywhere in the world. So what’s going to happen is—these politicians don’t know where to start. They don’t know about stopping companies from going out, leaving, like Pfizer. I will be the greatest jobs-producing president that God ever created. I’ll do a great job.”
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