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"The Trump administration's deportation goals will cause a major blow to the U.S. labor market," according to a new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.
If President Donald Trump succeeds at deporting millions of people over the next four years, his administration will be responsible for destroying millions of jobs and inflicting "immense pain" on both U.S.-born and immigrant workers.
That's according to a report published Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which bases its analysis on the Trump administration's privately stated goal of deporting at least 1 million immigrants during the Republican president's first year back in the White House.
Should the administration achieve that deportation objective each year for the remainder of Trump's term, "there will be 3.3 million fewer employed immigrants and 2.6 million fewer employed U.S.-born workers at the end of that period," wrote EPI senior economist Ben Zipperer.
"Employment in the construction sector will drop sharply: U.S.-born construction employment will fall by 861,000, and immigrant employment will fall by 1.4 million," Zipperer wrote. In late May, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) publicly touted its arrest of more than 100 construction workers in Tallahassee, Florida.
The millions of deportations desired by Trump and his deputies would also "eliminate half a million childcare jobs," EPI estimated.
Every state in the U.S. would be impacted by the president's attack on immigrants, according to Zipperer's analysis, but California, Florida, New York, and Texas would be most heavily impacted.
"The Trump administration's deportation goals will cause a major blow to the U.S. labor market," Zipperer wrote, "squandering the full employment that the Trump administration inherited from the Biden administration and also causing immense pain to the millions of U.S.-born and immigrant workers who may lose their jobs."
The EPI analysis comes days after Trump signed into law a sprawling budget measure that includes $75 billion in additional funding over the next four years for ICE, an agency whose current annual budget is around $10 billion. The $75 billion figure includes nearly $30 million for enforcement and deportation.
Immigrant rights groups and analysts warned following the Republican legislation's passage that the massive boost in ICE funding would supercharge Trump's mass deportation machine.
"There is a question of how quickly ICE can build up its infrastructure and personnel using its newfound resources," Vox's Nicole Narea wrote Thursday. "But just days after the bill passed, the administration made a show of force at Los Angeles' MacArthur Park on Monday, with heavily armed immigration agents in tactical gear and military-style trucks showing up to arrest undocumented immigrants."
Trump's mass deportation efforts are already having an impact on the U.S. economy, according to top officials and recent employment data.
During congressional testimony last month, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell—against whom Trump frequently rails despite initially picking him for the job during his first White House term—said the president's draconian crackdown on immigration was "one of the reasons" for slowing U.S. economic growth.
Earlier this month, following the release of the June jobs report, labor economist Mark Regets told Forbes that "the data for the last five months indicate a serious fall in the number of immigrant workers."
"Despite growth in the unadjusted numbers, the U.S.-born labor force participation rate and the overall seasonally adjusted labor force total suggest that the loss of immigrant labor is not bringing more U.S.-born workers into the labor force," said Regets.
In a tacit admission that its mass deportation agenda is damaging employment in certain industries, the Trump administration reportedly instructed ICE officials last month to mostly pause raids on agricultural, hotel, and restaurant work sites.
"The reason why this is happening, not so subtly alluded to by Trump, is because Brazil actually held its right-wing coup leader accountable," said one critic.
After days of publicly railing against Brazil for the trial of its former leader, Jair Bolsonaro, U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened the South American country with a 50% tariff "on any and all Brazilian products sent into the United States."
Far-right Bolsonaro, sometimes called the "Trump of the Tropics," lost Brazil's 2022 presidential election to leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the recipient of the Wednesday letter that the U.S. president posted on his Truth Social network.
Bolsonaro is now facing a trial for alleged crimes, including an attempted coup d'état, following his reelection loss. The Brazilian's effort to cling to power was called "straight from Donald Trump's playbook," with critics worldwide pointing to the U.S. leader inciting the January 6, 2021 insurrection after his own electoral loss the previous November.
"This is a disgrace, just old-fashioned imperialism. A 50% tariff because Brazil's legal system has defended democracy."
In Truth Social posts on Monday and Tuesday, Trump blasted the trial as a "WITCH HUNT" and an "attack on a Political Opponent" while praising Bolsonaro as a "strong Leader, who truly loved his Country" and a "very tough negotiator on TRADE."
Echoing those posts, Trump wrote to Lula: "The way Brazil has treated former President Bolsonaro, a Highly Respected Leader throughout the World during his Term, including by the United States, is an international disgrace. This Trial should not be taking place. It is a Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY!"
"Due in part to Brazil's insidious attacks on Free Elections, and the fundamental Free Speech Rights of Americans (as lately illustrated by the Brazilian Supreme Court, which has issued hundreds of SECRET and UNLAWFUL Censorship Orders to U.S. Social Media platforms, threatening them with Millions of Dollars in Fines and Eviction from the Brazilian Social Media market), starting on August 1, 2025, we will charge Brazil a Tariff of 50%," Trump continued.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes, the Brazilian Supreme Court justice overseeing Bolsonaro's case, was also involved in a legal battle that temporarily shut down the social media platform X in Brazil. The network, formerly known as Twitter, is owned by estranged Trump ally Elon Musk, the richest man on Earth. The weekslong suspension of X last year stemmed from the company's refusal to comply with an order to deactivate dozens of accounts accused of spreading disinformation.
Both Trump and Elon have used their power and platforms to go after Brazil. When Musk did it last year I spoke with some Brazilian media experts and journalists who explained that Brazil actually takes online disinformation and threats to their democracy seriously www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcn...
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— Kat Tenbarge (@kattenbarge.bsky.social) July 9, 2025 at 5:53 PM
Trump claimed in his letter to Lula that "these Tariffs are necessary to correct the many years of Brazil's Tariff, and Non-Tariff, Policies and Trade Barriers, causing these unsustainable Trade Deficits against the United States. However, The Guardian noted, "the U.S. runs a trade surplus with Brazil, thanks in part to a free-trade agreement expanded in 2020, during Trump's first term."
The newspaper pointed to data on Brazil from the website of United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer:
U.S. total goods trade with Brazil were an estimated $92 billion in 2024. U.S. goods exports to Brazil in 2024 were $49.7 billion, up 11.3% ($5.0 billion) from 2023. U.S. goods imports from Brazil in 2024 totaled $42.3 billion, up 8.3% ($3.2 billion) from 2023. The U.S. goods trade surplus with Brazil was $7.4 billion in 2024, a 31.9% increase ($1.8 billion) over 2023.
Various journalists and other critics also highlighted the surplus. Michael Reid, a writer and visiting professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said on social media: "This is a disgrace, just old-fashioned imperialism. A 50% tariff because Brazil's legal system has defended democracy. And by the way, the U.S. has a trade surplus with Brazil."
Politico reported that "the overtly political tone of the letter is a break with more than a dozen other letters Trump has sent to foreign governments this week, threatening to impose new tariff rates on their exports to the U.S. beginning August 1."
While Trump's letter to Brazil has overtly political motivations, he also said during a Tuesday Cabinet meeting that he would target the entire BRICS economic group of emerging market nations, which began with Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, and now also includes Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates.
"If they're a member of BRICS, they are going to have to pay a 10% tariff, just for that one thing—and they won't be a member long," Trump said, according to CNN. "BRICS was set up to hurt us, BRICS was set up to degenerate our dollar and take our dollar, take it off as the standard."
"Nobody wants weak crypto rules more than the president of the United States," said the senator.
As the U.S. House prepares to vote on the latest proposal claiming to regulate the cryptocurrency industry—one that critics say is actually a "cash grab" that will harm consumers—Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday took the opportunity of a hearing on digital assets to outline her five main priorities for any legislation aimed at regulating crypto.
Along with protecting consumers within the crypto market, she said, Congress must pass legislation that safeguards the country from public officials—including President Donald Trump—who want to personally profit from the burgeoning industry.
Those priorities haven't been addressed, she suggested, in proposals like the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act and the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act, which lawmakers are expected to vote on in the coming days.
"I'm concerned that what my Republican colleagues are aiming for is another industry handout that gives the crypto lobby exactly its wish list: the blessing of the government's approval, combined with crypto rules that are weaker than the rules every other financial actor must follow," said Warren (D-Mass.).
Any regulatory framework for the crypto industry, in which investors can use real money to purchase virtual or digital assets and trade them on decentralized, unregulated blockchain technology, must include the framework set up by "the securities laws that have served as the bedrock of our capital markets for nearly 100 years," said Warren—but the CLARITY Act includes language that would allow "non-crypto companies to tokenize their assets to evade the SEC's [Security and Exchange Commission] regulations."
"If we're going to provide rules of the road for crypto, we need to shut down this superhighway for presidential corruption at the same time."
"Under the House bill, a publicly traded company like Meta or Tesla could simply decide to put its stock on the blockchain and POOF! it would escape all SEC regulation," said Warren.
Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) also spoke out against the CLARITY Act's provision on Tuesday, saying the bill would "create a race to the bottom and fuel fraud and financial instability."
With the crypto market growing 15-fold over the last five years, with a $3 trillion market capitalization in 2024, risks to "investors, our financial system, and our national security have also sharply increased," Warren warned in the hearing.
She pointed to FBI findings that Americans lost more than $9 billion to fraud in the unregulated crypto market last year—a 66% increase from 2023‚ and a Chainalysis report that hackers from North Korea were able to steal $1.3 billion from crypto platforms in 2024 as well as $1.5 billion earlier this year.
"Crypto investors should have the same protections from getting scammed or cheated as investors in any other asset," said Warren. "For example, there is no reason that the rules prohibiting stock exchanges from simultaneously serving as brokers and giving preferential treatment to their own trades over their customers' can't be applied to the crypto market too."
Warren also called for legislation that ensures instability in the crypto market won't "infect" the larger financial system by guaranteeing that taxpayers are not on the hook for "risky crypto bets," and that includes commonsense rules to protect national security and fight crime within the industry.
The GENIUS Act, which 18 Democrats joined the vast majority of Senate Republicans in passing last month, did not include anti-money laundering rules or sufficiently close sanctions loopholes, said Warren, with Republicans saying the issues could be addressed in a future bill regarding crypto market structure.
"So this is it. No more kicking the can down the road. Now is the time to solve that problem," said Warren.
Finally, Warren said any bill addressing regulations in the crypto market must "shut down the president's crypto corruption" by prohibiting all public officials from issuing, sponsoring, or profiting from crypto tokens.
Warren's comments came weeks after Trump held a dinner with the top 220 investors in his own $TRUMP meme coin and offered a VIP White House tour to the top 25 mostly anonymous investors—an event that progressive organizers said was "corruption embodied."
"Nobody wants weak crypto rules more than the president of the United States," said Warren, noting that $7 billion of Trump's wealth now comes from his own stablecoin and meme coin, a bitcoin mining company, a "huge portfolio of crypto investments," and includes more than $320 million in fees from the $TRUMP coin—even as the majority of investors in the token lost money.
"If we're going to provide rules of the road for crypto, we need to shut down this superhighway for presidential corruption at the same time," said Warren.
Urging Congress to vote against the CLARITY Act this week, AFR also warned that the "massive deregulatory bill" is backed by "a gusher of campaign cash and lobbying muscle from ultrawealthy venture capital firms and crypto billionaires," with Trump set to "gain the most from this giveaway" after making $1.2 billion in crypto just in the past few months."
"CLARITY (along with related crypto bills being considered) is a custom-built framework that gives him and his billionaire allies a green light to manipulate financial markets," said the group, "while working families are left holding the bag."
"It is very likely that these historically high tariffs will damage the economy," writes the Tax Policy Center.
With U.S. President Donald Trump yet again ramping up international trade war tensions, a new analysis conducted by the Tax Policy Center projects that American consumers will soon be paying "extraordinarily high" tariffs on staple goods unless the president again backs down from his threats.
As the Tax Policy Center explains, Trump has set an August 1 deadline for countries to make trade deals with the U.S. or else face the higher tariff rates he first unveiled back in early April that caused the stock market to abruptly crater. Should Trump follow through with his vow to reinstate the tariffs on the countries that have not yet reached agreements, writes the Tax Policy Center, it would mean tariffs "ranging from as high as 48% on women's clothing, 40% on books, and even 22% on baked goods, according to our estimates."
What's worse, the center adds that these are merely the average tariffs that goods imported from all nations will face. Individual products could get hit with even bigger tariffs depending on their country of origin.
"The top tariff on men's and women's clothing will exceed 77%," they write. "Tariffs on purses could be as high as 90%, and tariffs on baked goods could reach 85%. Tariffs on beer will be as high as 79%."
The center's analysis adds that consumers likely won't feel the impact of the tariffs right away since retailers have been stocking up on goods as a way to get ahead of the tariffs. However, this strategy can only work for so long since retailers will eventually have to restock their wares and will then be forced to pass some of costs from the tariff onto their customers.
"As a likely result, consumer prices will rise, employment and incomes in downstream industries will fall and profits will shrink," the Tax Policy Center warns. "The value of retirement plans that hold stocks in these industries will also likely drop... Eventually... it is very likely that these historically high tariffs will damage the economy."
Economist Dean Baker wrote earlier this week that the total impact of the tariffs on American consumers could amount to an average tax of $16,000 per household over the span of a decade, which he said would actually be an estimate on the lower end of the spectrum.