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‘Disgusting’: Trump’s Top Economic Adviser Brags About Killing 300,000 Americans' ‘High-Paying’ Jobs
"Everybody is hurt by what he's celebrating," one public employee union official told Common Dreams. "I guess it's just par for the course from this administration, but it's still a disgusting thing to hear."
Apr 10, 2026
President Donald Trump's top economic adviser boasted on Fox Business Thursday that the government had slashed more than 300,000 "high-paying" jobs from the federal payroll during the president's first year back in office.
Asked by anchor Maria Bartiromo about the administration's efforts to cut government spending, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said it had made "a huge amount of progress."
"I think the biggest thing that we can point to is that we've cut government employment by 300,000 workers," he said. "Those are jobs that are very high-paying that are gone forever."
He claimed the cuts reduced government spending by "an unthinkable amount of money," perhaps $1 trillion over the next ten years.
He also said that the administration "reduced the deficit last year by $600 billion" through a combination of higher-than-expected economic growth, tariff revenues, and "supply side effects" of Trump's massive tax cut, which mostly benefited the wealthiest Americans while gutting the social safety net.
Dean Baker, a longtime collaborator of Hassett’s despite their opposing political beliefs, wrote on social media that Trump’s economic adviser was dramatically exaggerating the deficit reduction that occurred during the administration's first year.
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the deficit was about $1.8 trillion for fiscal year 2025, just $41 billion less than the previous year and $56 billion lower than the $1.9 trillion deficit CBO projected in its most recent baseline.
"In the real world, the deficit fell... less than one-tenth of what Kevin claims," Baker said.
Trump has touted the layoffs of hundreds of thousands of government employees from their "boring federal jobs" as one of his crowning achievements.
Among the agencies hit by mass layoffs were the Department of Veterans Affairs, where more than 12,700 employees got the axe; the Department of Health and Human Services, which lost more than 14,400 workers; the Social Security Administration, whose staff shrank by more than 6,600; and the Environmental Protection Agency, which lost more than 4,000 employees.
Jacqueline Simon, policy director at the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest labor union representing federal workers, told Common Dreams that even if slashing jobs did reduce the deficit as Hassett claimed, the harm far outweighs any such benefit—not only for the fired employees, but for the millions of Americans who depend on services they provide.
"When you say 300,000 jobs, it is a nice round number, and you link it to deficit reduction, which he was lying about," Simon said. "The fact of the matter is, the disappearance of those 300,000 jobs means degraded healthcare for our veterans; slower or nonexistent service at the Social Security Administration for the elderly and disabled who rely on Social Security for their income; and the elimination of huge swaths of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that help ensure we have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink."
"You have federal prisons absolutely overwhelmed by too many inmates and too few corrections officers, endangering public safety," she continued. "Consumer product safety has been eviscerated. There are also serious public health concerns involving substance abuse, childhood nutrition, and vaccinations."
She decried Hassett's comments as "ignorant" in light of his false claims about deficit reduction, but also "just demonstrably pretty cruel and disdainful" given the impact these job losses have on individuals, families, communities, and society as a whole.
"It's cruel," Simon said, "not only on the people who held those jobs—about a 100,000 of whom are military veterans—but the impact of the disappearance of those jobs also falls on children, the elderly, anybody who consumes agricultural products, breathes air, or relies on clean water."
"Everybody is hurt by what he's celebrating," she added. "I guess it's just par for the course from this administration, but it's still a disgusting thing to hear."
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The AI Industry Must Take Responsibility for the Communities It’s Destroying
If AI is to fulfill its transformative potential, its benefits must be more equitably distributed, and its environmental costs more transparently accounted for.
Apr 04, 2026
Critics are buzzing about Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez’s estimated $5 million Met Gala sponsorship, noting that while framed as philanthropy, it also serves as elite branding and may deliver limited benefit to the broader arts. A similar pattern appears in tech, where highly publicized giving, grants, and initiatives build brand visibility while directing relatively little to wider communities.
As an anthropologist who studies US corporations, I have seen firsthand how technology firms including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft frequently present their companies as a catalyst for economic development and employment opportunity. Large-scale initiatives are framed as serving the public interest, yet evidence reveals a persistent gap between these narratives and their material outcomes. Promised benefits such as job creation, regional development, and infrastructure investment tend to be unevenly distributed or shorter in duration than initially suggested.
Research on data centers underscores these concerns. Although construction phases generate temporary employment, long-term job creation is modest—often fewer than 200 permanent positions per facility. At the same time, AI infrastructure development places significant demands on land, energy, and water resources, and depends on extractive supply chains for minerals such as cobalt and lithium. The result is an extractive industry in which financial gains accrue primarily to tech investors, while the environmental and economic burdens are borne by local communities.
Recent projects across the United States make these dynamics visible. In Indiana, Bezos’s Amazon company cleared 1,200 acres of farmland to build an $11 billion data farm for training artificial intelligence models. In Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, Amazon bought land near a nuclear power plant by the Susquehanna River that used to be zoned for agriculture. Across the country, Gates’ Microsoft has advanced controversial data center projects despite local opposition over environmental strain, including in Michigan and Wisconsin.
Designating data centers as critical infrastructure should not exempt companies from regulatory oversight or fair contributions to the communities in which they operate.
Taken together, these cases point to the broader policy challenge of how to evaluate and govern technology infrastructure projects that are framed as public goods but function within extractive economic models.
Philanthropic initiatives often accompany these developments, shaping public perception of investors’ generosity, but leaving underlying dynamics unchanged. Bezos’ Earth Fund, for example, has directed billions toward climate-related efforts, but much of that funding supports technology that benefits his companies. Similarly, Bill Gates’ climate philanthropy has prioritized large-scale technological interventions, including proposals such as spraying sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to dim sunlight and lower global temperatures—but scientists warn that such approaches carry significant risks for both public health and ecological systems.
Federal policy is accelerating the problem. President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency related to energy production and encouraged private investments in energy industries. Within this framework, data centers are now designated as critical to national security, given the role of AI in military and defense systems.
However, while federal policy actively courts investment, the communities hosting this infrastructure are often excluded from meaningful participation in its benefits.
At the state level, data center developers aggressively pursue and often secure substantial tax incentives as jurisdictions compete to attract investment. Indiana alone could forego up to $1 billion in tax revenue. Pennsylvania has yet to fully assess the fiscal impact of similar agreements. In Virginia and other states, data center operators are exempt from sales taxes on equipment and electricity, further reducing public returns.
The concentration of wealth and environmental burden extends beyond US borders. KoBold Metals, an AI-driven mineral exploration company backed by both Bill Gates and jeff Bezos, is expanding operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Using laser technology, the company seeks deposits of cobalt, copper, nickel, and lithium—materials essential to batteries and AI infrastructure. The Congo currently supplies about 76% of the world’s cobalt, placing it at the center of the global technology economy.
While such projects may generate economic opportunities, they also reproduce familiar patterns. As with data center development in the United States, claims of job creation and regional development warrant careful scrutiny, particularly in contexts marked by historical inequality and resource extraction.
Artificial intelligence and data infrastructure are now central to economic competitiveness and national security, and these priorities are legitimate. However, if AI is to fulfill its transformative potential, its benefits must be more equitably distributed, and its environmental costs more transparently accounted for. Designating data centers as critical infrastructure should not exempt companies from regulatory oversight or fair contributions to the communities in which they operate. Nor can philanthropic initiatives cloud scientists’ knowledge and recommendations.
Policy interventions are needed to rebalance these dynamics. To make the AI boom work for the public rather than just private investors, companies must fully disclose their water and energy consumption, so that communities can understand what they are giving up to big data centers. State and local governments should condition tax incentives on measurable public benefits, including a pre-set number of durable jobs and investments in local infrastructure. And voters must hold elected officials accountable—at the ballot box—for these agreements.
Additionally, mechanisms such as royalties or revenue-generating agreements—long applied in extractive industries like oil and natural gas—could ensure that communities hosting data centers receive a meaningful share of the wealth generated. While the federal government captures significant revenue tied to AI economic activity, state and local governments should, too.
If the AI sector is to gain any public legitimacy, it must take responsibility both for the technologies it develops and for the social environmental consequences of their deployment.
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One Year of Trump Tariffs Prove Corporate Profits Always Came Before the Public Interest
The 2026 NTE Report makes it clear that the Trump administration's primary motivation behind its trade policy is to protect the profits of big US companies.
Apr 02, 2026
One year ago today, President Donald Trump waved around the annual National Trade Estimates Report when he announced his reciprocal tariffs, calling it a “special book” listing other countries’ purported “non-tariff trade barriers.” Using the threat of tariffs (now deemed illegal by the Supreme Court), President Trump has bullied countries into signing up to “reciprocal trade agreements” that target many of the policies included in the report.
Earlier this week, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) released the updated 2026 version of this “special book,” and we can now see that this year’s National Trade Estimates (NTE) Report continues and expands its targeting of critical public interest regulations related to safety in the digital economy, climate policy, environmental protection, public health, and more.
Consumer advocates have long criticized the annual NTE because administrations of both parties have used it to parrot the demands of behemoth corporate interests, without sufficient regard to the public interest. After the Biden administration took positive steps, recognizing that public interest regulations should not necessarily be listed as “trade barriers,” the Trump administration reverted to regurgitating the hit list of Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Ag, and other billionaire interests—and is now doubling down, attacking even more public interest laws around the world.
Big Tech Accountability:
Given the proximity of Big Tech companies to the Trump administration, it was only to be expected that the NTE Report would build on the previous year’s attacks on global digital policies. Unfortunately, this year’s report once again labels other countries’ digital ecosystem policies as “trade barriers,” simply because Big Tech companies find them objectionable.
The brazen attacks against a range of crucial public interest policies, ranging from digital rights to public health regulations, reflect the unfortunate anti-people policies of this administration.
The digital ecosystem regulations being targeted by the Trump administration include:
- Data protection, privacy, and data governance laws: This year's report identifies 34 jurisdictions with laws that regulate cross-border data flows, compared to 27 in the 2025 NTE Report. This includes several data protection and privacy laws, including those in Brazil, Canada, the European Union (EU), Kenya, Nigeria, India, Turkiye, and Vietnam. These laws all aim to ensure that companies cannot evade local privacy and data protection norms simply by transferring data to jurisdictions with low privacy standards. The NTE Report also targets several data governance measures that seek to regulate cross-border transfers of public sector data, sensitive information (such as health and financial data), and geospatial data. This includes laws in Bolivia, Ecuador, India, Korea, and South Africa.
- Anti-monopoly and revenue-sharing laws: Several jurisdictions are attempting to create more competitive digital ecosystems by implementing digital sector-related competition regulation. Many of these are targeted in the NTE Report, which lists nine jurisdictions’ digital competition laws as trade barriers. This includes laws enacted in the EU, Japan, Turkiye, and the UK, and proposed regulations in Australia, Korea, Brazil, South Africa, and Vietnam.
In addition, the report also targets various revenue-sharing regulations implemented by a number of jurisdictions. These regulations typically seek to force Big Tech platforms to support local industries that they cannibalize—such as traditional news producers—or to ensure that Big Tech platforms contribute to local content development. The report lists six jurisdictions with such laws—Australia, Korea, Canada, and the EU, which already have some form of regulation in place, as well as proposed regulations in New Zealand and South Africa.
This is a significant increase from last year’s report, which listed a total of six jurisdictions’ digital competition-related or revenue-sharing laws.
- Digital services and other taxes: The Trump administration has consistently sought to prevent other countries from taxing US-based Big Tech companies. Many countries are unable to appropriately levy income tax on Big Tech companies as these companies do not have a physical presence within their borders. Instead, they use Digital Services Taxes (DSTs) to ensure that these companies pay some tax within their jurisdictions. Similar to last year, the report identifies eight jurisdictions that have DSTs or equivalent taxes in place: Canada, Colombia, the EU, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkiye, and the UK.
- AI regulations: With AI quickly becoming embedded into nearly every aspect of our lives, some jurisdictions are seeking to regulate the development and deployment of AI systems to mitigate potential harms. This year's report lists the EU’s AI Act as a trade barrier (similar to last year), but also includes another five jurisdictions’ AI-related policies as trade barriers, largely to oppose attempts at developing local AI ecosystems. For instance, the report targets Japan’s subsidies for building out domestic AI capacities and sovereign AI infrastructure. Similarly, domestic procurement norms in Korea and Ecuador have also been criticized.
Climate and Environmental Protection:
While the urgency of climate change demands bold action at all levels, this year’s report unfortunately doubles down on the Trump administration’s hostility toward efforts to hasten a clean energy transition at home and globally. Instead of incorporating lessons from other countries to inform our own urgently-needed climate policies, the NTE attacks other countries’ environmental and climate laws on behalf of polluting industries, such as:
- Policies to boost the clean energy transition: The report takes aim at a number of climate-related policies in the EU, including its Renewable Energy Directive, Deforestation-Free Supply Chain Regulation, Eco Design for Sustainable Products Regulation, and Sustainable Aviation Fuel Regulation, which require industry to meet sustainability guidelines. The report also attacks the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) regulation, which went into effect in January 2026, and the UK’s proposed CBAM, scheduled to commence in 2027, which levy charges on embedded emissions of certain imported products to incentivize lower emission production.
- Green certification and local content policies, including the UAE’s green certification program, which gives priority government services (tax exemptions, subsidies, free trade zone benefits) to industries that use sustainable materials and methods, and India’s domestic content requirements for renewable energy government procurement contracts.
- Policies to tackle plastic pollution, including Canada’s Zero Plastic Waste Agenda; United Arab Emirates ban on some single-use styrofoam products, such as cups and lids; Dominican Republic’s regulations prohibiting import of non-biodegradable straws and cutlery; Oman’s regulation on single-use plastic bags; Cote d’Ivoire’s regulations on import of plastic bags; and Chile’s plan to implement regulations to address single-use plastic in bottles (which was successfully derailed by the US through negotiation).
Public Health
In keeping with the Trump administration’s unscientific public health policies as well as the administration’s desire to promote the interests of Big Pharma and Big Ag, the report attacks several critical public health policies from around the world. This includes:
- Drug pricing regulations and processes in Canada, the EU, India, Australia, and New Zealand, which aim to enhance access to lifesaving medicines.
- Regulations in several countries, including Bangladesh, GCC countries, and Ukraine, on the sale of energy and sugary drinks, including restrictions on advertising and the sale of these products to minors.
- Restrictions on the import of genetically engineered (GE) food in the EU, Mexico, Peru, Russia, Serbia, Taiwan, Turkiye, Ukraine, UK, Angola, Ethiopia, Guatemala, UAE, India, Kenya, and Korea.
- Regulation of pesticides in Vietnam, China, the EU, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Taiwan, Turkiye, and the UK.
- Restrictions by the EU, Thailand, China, Russia, and Taiwan on the use of growth hormones and beta-agonists such as ractopamine to treat beef and pork products.
- Safety and reporting regulations on the import of infant formula in Ethiopia, India, and Colombia
- Regulations related to chemicals, including the EU’s “precautionary” REACH chemical regulation, new hazard classification, labeling, and packaging of chemicals; and regulation of endocrine disruptors; Canada and the EU phasing out per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as “forever chemicals” that cause cancer, fertility issues, acid rain, air pollution, bioaccumulate in wildlife and fish, and more; and chemical regulation requirements in Korea and Turkiye.
- Indonesia’s mandate for testing heavy metals in cosmetics; Kuwait’s stipulation for health certificates disclosing the country of origin for imported cosmetics, food, and pharmaceuticals; the EU’s regulations on antimicrobial resistance and veterinary medicinal products.
Additional Public Interest Policies
Shockingly, the report targets South Africa’s anti-discrimination and equal opportunities regulations that seek to ensure greater participation of workers and historically marginalized communities in the corporate sector. Elon Musk criticized South Africa’s regulations earlier this year, claiming that Starlink is “not allowed to operate in South Africa simply because [he’s] not black [sic].” Taken together with President Trump’s unhinged claims about apparent “genocide” against white South Africans, the inclusion of these regulations in the NTE Report is a worrying sign that the US government intends to use trade tools to push its "anti-diversity" agenda globally.
The report also targets halal certification laws in several majority Muslim countries, notably Brunei, Egypt, the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.
Conclusion
The 2026 NTE Report makes it clear that the Trump administration's primary motivation behind its trade policy is to protect the profits of big U.S. companies. The brazen attacks against a range of crucial public interest policies, ranging from digital rights to public health regulations, reflect the unfortunate anti-people policies of this administration.
Countries across the world should be free to adopt measures to protect citizens’ fundamental rights and consumer safety—without having such measures challenged purely to enable greater corporate profit. And they should not feel beholden to undermine their public interest protections because of the deals they signed under threat of Trump’s sweeping tariffs, especially since those tariffs have now been ruled illegal by the US Supreme Court.
While the Trump administration has made it clear that it intends to double down on its coercive trade policies, including through the use of alternative tariff authorities, we stand in solidarity with civil society around the globe in urging countries to stand up to Trump’s bullying and continue to press ahead with important policies to hold Big Tech accountable and to protect their environment and the health of their people.
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