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Economy
'Dismal' Employment Report Shows Trump Economy Lost 92,000 Jobs in February
“Month after month, the data shows Donald Trump’s economy is failing American families.”
Mar 06, 2026
President Donald Trump's self-proclaimed "greatest" economy in history took another major blow on Friday as the US Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that the American economy lost 92,000 jobs in February.
Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, described the report as "dismal," while noting that the US economy as a whole has actually lost jobs since Trump announced his "liberation day" global tariffs in April 2025.
"Total job gains since from May 2025 to February 2026 are now -19,000," she wrote. "Companies are not hiring in the face of all of these headwinds and uncertainty. And even healthcare is starting to slow down."
University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers argued that "the economic story just changed dramatically" because of the jobs report, which also showed downward revisions to the estimated jobs created in December and January.
"Recession questions are back on the menu," he said.
Mike Konczal, senior director of policy and research at the Economic Security Project, zeroed in on the surprise loss of healthcare jobs in February as particularly concerning given that healthcare has been the lone industry to consistently add jobs in recent months.
"This is the first month in years where healthcare jobs went negative, really changing the dynamic," he said. "Cuts to Medicaid, cuts to ACA... suddenly the thing that was 187% of private jobs since liberation day, holding it together, may be giving out?"
Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), ranking member of the House Budget Committee, said that the terrible jobs report was a direct reflection of Trump's economic mismanagement.
"Month after month, the data shows Donald Trump’s economy is failing American families," Boyle said. "The job market is weakening, costs remain high, and Trump’s illegal tariff taxes continue to hurt businesses and workers. Trump and his allies in Congress know their agenda isn’t working. Instead of helping working families, they are pushing more tariff taxes and more tax breaks for billionaires. It is clear Republicans in Washington simply do not care about working families."
Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at Groundwork Collaborative, declared that "the deterioration in the labor market is visible from space," and pinned the blame on "Trump’s reckless economic agenda."
"As the president piles on blanket tariffs and oil prices soar," Jacquez said, "today's report confirms he's sent the economy straight into a stagflation spiral."
University of Pennsylvania economist Heather Boushey said weakness in the US economy had been evident for several months, although Friday's jobs report showed the largest job losses of any month during Trump's second term.
"Today's data should not come as a shock as there have been signs of weakening in the US labor market for quite some time," she said. "The Trump administration’s focus on undermining the US economy rather than investing in America may be coming home to roost."
Daniel Hornung, policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, said that the bad jobs report will make things even harder for the US Federal Reserve when it comes to making interest rate cut decisions.
"This morning’s report... comes at a difficult moment, with inflation still above target and an oil price shock threatening to raise inflation further," Hornung said. "The report complicates the Fed’s efforts to keep both unemployment and inflation low, and it makes it difficult for the [Trump] administration to argue heading into the midterms that their policies are leading to the kind of growth or improvement in living standards that they’ve long promised."
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Federal Judge Orders Trump Admin to Refund Billions of Dollars to Businesses That Paid Illegal Tariffs
One organizer called the ruling a "victory for small businesses who have paid billions in unlawful tariffs and deserve their money back."
Mar 05, 2026
US customs officials are due to report to the Court of International Trade in New York on Friday to detail their plans for issuing billions of dollars in refunds to American businesses that paid tariffs which were struck down by the US Supreme Court last month.
On Wednesday, Judge Richard Eaton at the federal trade court ruled that "all importers of record" are "entitled to benefit" from the Supreme Court ruling that found President Donald Trump had illegally invoked the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs on more than 300,000 US businesses that import goods, the vast majority of which were small businesses, as a central policy of his economic agenda.
The Supreme Court found Trump could not use the IEEPA to unilaterally set tariffs.
Eaton ruled in a case brought by Atmus Filtration, a company based in Nashville, Tennessee, which filed one of about 2,000 lawsuits at the trade court seeking refunds for the tariffs.
US Customs and Border Protection is likely to appeal the decision or “seek a stay to buy more time," former US trade official Ryan Majerus told NBC News, but Eaton did not appear convinced Wednesday when a Justice Department lawyer Claudia Burke, said in court that issuing refunds en masse would be time-consuming for the CBP and would necessitate the manual review of millions of entries.
"We live in the age of computers," said Eaton. "It must be possible for Customs Service to program its computers so it doesn't need a manual review.
Burke also told Eaton that the administration hadn't determined its position on refunding the tariffs, to which the judge replied: "Your position is clear. The Supreme Court told you what your position is."
Eaton noted that refunds are processed every day by CBP through a process called "liquidation" when goods are imported through the agency. CBP issues an accounting of what is owed by the importer, and the company has 180 days to formally contest its duties. The judge ordered customs officials to stop collecting tariffs on goods currently in the liquidation process and to recalculate duties for goods that were past the 180-day window, without the illegally imposed tariffs, resulting in a refund.
“Customs knows how to do this,” said Eaton. "They do it every day. They liquidate entries and make refunds."
Atmus Filtration estimated in court filings it had paid $11 million in illegal tariffs. The federal government collected $130 billion in tariffs under the IEEPA last year, and according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, could ultimately owe $175 billion in refunds to businesses.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said the Trump administration "must move quickly to reimburse the thousands of small businesses in Virginia and across the country that bore the brunt of President Trump’s harmful and illegal tariffs."
Dan Anthony, executive director of the We Pay the Tariffs coalition, called the ruling a "victory for small businesses who have paid billions in unlawful tariffs and deserve their money back."
"The court acted swiftly and correctly," said Anthony. "Now the ball is in the government's court and small businesses are concerned they will drag this out further. American small businesses have waited long enough. A full, fast, and automatic refund process is what these businesses are owed and anything less is unacceptable."
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'That’s Not Winning': Record Numbers of US Workers Are Raiding Their 401(k)s in Trump Economy
"Instead of helping, Trump made the largest healthcare cuts in American history and doubled down on his costly tariff taxes," said Rep. Brendon Boyle.
Mar 04, 2026
Even as President Donald Trump has declared that the US is in a "golden age" with the "greatest" economy on record, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that a record number of US workers are dipping into their retirement savings.
The Journal cited recent data from Vanguard Group showing that 6% of the 401(k) plans it administers took a hardship withdrawal in 2025, up from 4.8% that took such a withdrawal in 2024.
The top reasons for such withdrawals last year were avoiding eviction or paying off medical expenses, according to Vanguard.
The Journal noted that the Vanguard data about hardship withdrawals comes as "more Americans are falling behind on debt payments, including on some types of mortgages, putting them at risk of foreclosure," and "the average income of clients seeking help from credit-counseling agencies is rising."
Some Democrats quickly pounced on the Journal report, which they said undercut Trump's rosy assessment of the US economy.
"Record numbers of Americans are raiding their 401(k)s to avoid eviction or pay medical bills," wrote Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.). "That's not winning."
Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) pointed to the Journal report and accused Trump and the GOP of exacerbating these problems with the cuts to Medicaid contained in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that the party passed in 2025.
"A record number of Americans are dipping into their retirement savings just to stay afloat," wrote Boyle, the ranking member of the House Budget Committee. "A leading cause: Skyrocketing healthcare costs. Instead of helping, Trump made the largest healthcare cuts in American history and doubled down on his costly tariff taxes."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) responded to the report by saying, "This is not the golden age Donald Trump promised."
Andrew Bates, former senior deputy press secretary for President Joe Biden, also pointed to the GOP budget law as a key reasons for Americans' deteriorating financial security.
"The GOP in Washington makes the biggest healthcare and energy cuts in history, just to lower taxes for the rich," he wrote. "'Golden Age' for Jeffrey Epstein’s surviving friends, shittiness for everyone else."
Ann Larson, co-founder of Debt Collective, noted that while the data on 401(k) withdrawals is disturbing, it doesn't tell the whole story of the dire overall state of Americans' finances.
"This is bad, but add in the almost half of older Americans who have ZERO retirement savings to pull from," Larson wrote, "and the picture is even more horrifying."
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‘These Guys Can’t Help Themselves’: Cruz Pushes $200 Billion Capital Gains Tax Cut Without OK From Congress
Republican senators said they were seeking to end an "unfair inflation tax on everyday Americans." But nearly all the benefits of their proposal would go to the wealthiest 1%.
Mar 03, 2026
Two leading Republicans are pushing for the Trump administration to issue another $200 billion tax cut, primarily to the wealthiest Americans, without congressional approval.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Tim Scott (R-SC) sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urging him to use executive authority to lower the federal tax on capital gains—the profits from selling stocks, bonds, real estate, and other investments.
The senators have proposed that capital gains taxes should be “indexed for inflation." As the Post explained:
The plan pushed by Cruz and Scott has been sought by conservatives for many years. Under current law, an investor who bought $100 worth of stock in 1990 and sold it today for $300 would currently owe capital gains taxes on the full $200 in profit. But the $100 investment in 1990 would be worth roughly $230 in today’s dollars after accounting for inflation. Under the Cruz-Scott proposal, the investor would only owe taxes on that $70, rather than the full $200.
The senators called on Bessent to "eliminate" this "unfair inflation tax on everyday Americans."
According to Federal Reserve data from 2025, the richest 1% of Americans owned about half of all stocks, while the poorest 50% owned only 1%.
Republicans' so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which enacted massive cuts to social programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) last summer, is already estimated to funnel more than $1 trillion to the top 1% of earners over the next 10 years, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
It is unclear whether Bessent would even have the power to change how gains are taxed without an act of Congress, or if Bessent has any interest in doing so. But the vast majority of the benefits from Cruz and Scott's proposal, if enacted, would likely go to the rich as well.
When the Trump administration first considered indexing capital gains taxes to inflation back in 2018, the Penn Wharton Budget Model projected that 63% of the benefits would flow to the richest 0.1%—those making tens of millions per year—while 86% would go to the top 1%.
Those in the bottom 90% of earners would see just over 2% of the overall benefits, with those in the bottom half receiving basically nothing.
According to the Post, the senators view lowering capital gains taxes as part of a GOP bid to "improve its economic approval rating with voters ahead of the 2026 midterm elections," in which the party is expected to take a walloping, according to current polls.
Voters have not responded kindly to previous bills that handed lavish tax breaks to the rich. At the time of its passage, the OBBBA was one of the least popular pieces of legislation in modern history, with several polls showing nearly a 2-to-1 disapproval rating.
But Cruz and Scott are pushing for this policy change despite the public revulsion and the fact that the Department of Justice has previously ruled that the Treasury Department can't make policy without Congress' approval.
"Ted Cruz is asking the Treasury Department to break the law to give another round of tax breaks to the ultrarich," remarked Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee. "These guys can't help themselves."
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