U.S. President Donald Trump reacts in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 19, 2025. REUTERS Ken Cedeno
Economist Catherine Rampell said the nation’s terrible jobs report would likely be much better right now if Trump had entered the White House more than a year ago and just went to bed and stayed there.
Experts were stunned after the latest report found the Trump economy losing 92,000 jobs in February instead of the 50,000 job increase it expected. Numbers revealed unemployment rising to 4.4 percent, driving the Washington Post to sound the alarms of imminent stagflation.
Trump’s National Economic Council Director Kevin Hasset attempted to blame the weather and West Coast strikes, but Rampell said it is of course about Trump’s policies. Hasset also hinted at changes in the nation’s economic “birth-death model,” implicating a falling rate of working-age bodies to drive revenue.
Rampell said Trump’s policies most definitely upset the birth-death model with its wholesale expulsion of working-age immigrants.
“So, we had been hearing for years from Trump and his allies that if you pulled immigrants out of the economy, then you would have a lot more job openings for native-born Americans, that immigrants were stealing all of the jobs that should have gone to, you know, red-blooded Americans. And therefore, if you just yanked them out of the labor force and out of the country, that would create an abundance of riches in terms of job opportunities for native-born Americans,” said Rampell.
“Is it that we should have expected more job growth for native born Americans? Or is it … we should have expected less job growth overall? So, you know, they kind of want it both ways. And either way, they're just trying to cope with the fact that the numbers are not great,” Rampell told Bulwark editor Jonathan Last. “… [Y]ou should never read too much into one month's report. Every economist will tell you that. But it's not just one month's report. We've seen, again, six months now under Trump's tenure in which we've had job losses.”
“And when there's been growth, it's been really slow,” said Last.
And even as Trump’s number’s dive, Rampell said the president is continuing the same policies that brought the nation here, and compounding them with even more.
“The problem is that at the same time, we have oil prices jumping… . I think we had a 25 cent per gallon increase this week alone in price of gas. And we have a war in the Middle East, which is about to mess up huge swaths of the global economy,” Rampell said. “Not just oil, not just energy, but trade and commodities like aluminum. [And] Fertilizer, which is a precursor for food production. … [C]an you imagine how different the economy would be if Donald Trump had just come into office and done nothing?”
“Just gone golfing,” Last said.
“Just gone golfing, as some of us advised him to do,” said Rampell.