‘Dirty Trick’: JD Vance Protesters Find Themselves On Wrong Street, Rush Toward Motorcade
'I knew I couldn't run fast enough, so I didn't try'
American universities should be for Americans
During a press gaggle this week, President Trump casually announced that the United States would allow 600,000 Chinese nationals to enter the country as college students. He has long focused on improving relations with China, but the idea of importing and educating such numbers runs against the America First instincts of his voters.
When Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was asked why these students were so important, he admitted that many U.S. universities would go out of business without foreign enrollment. For the right, that sounds less like a warning and more like a promise.
Republicans once opposed bailouts for failing businesses. Why make an exception for universities that train activists and foreigners to despise America?
Ending large-scale immigration from a rival power while letting bankrupt institutions fail should be an easy win. Instead, the Trump administration seems poised to prop up anti-American universities by training the children of our most dangerous adversary.
Why import students from our greatest rival?
Every conservative politician and pundit insists that China is America’s foremost threat. It has a massive population, vast economic leverage, deep investments in resources, and ambitions to expand its sphere of influence. Its military is large, its weapons advanced, and its spies operate regularly on U.S. soil. A hot war may be unlikely, but it is fair to call China our greatest economic and geopolitical rival. So why are we welcoming Chinese nationals into the country, much less into our most prestigious schools?
America’s broader immigration crisis has already ravaged our job market, housing market, health system, and education system. Illegal immigration rightly comes first: Illegal aliens are unvetted, often smuggled in by cartels and gangs, and begin their stay by breaking the law.
But the public is waking up to the damage caused by legal immigration as well. The administration recently admitted there are 55 million active visa holders eligible to enter the United States — a number equal to the combined populations of Florida and Texas. Voters want both illegal immigration ended and legal immigration slashed.
Chinese nationals should be first on the block. If China is truly our enemy, why would we let any of its citizens inside? The Chinese state is infamous for espionage. Its spy network has penetrated American government, military, corporations, and universities. These spies don’t just chase classified secrets; they steal research and technology from labs and departments. Commentators like Eric Weinstein have suggested that universities slow their own programs for fear that breakthroughs will be stolen by foreign students. America is holding back its own scientific progress to import spies. That’s insane.
Educating tomorrow’s rivals
The danger goes beyond espionage. Universities don’t just teach skills; they confer the credentials that grant access to elite institutions in business, science, and government. A Chinese student who returns home brings knowledge and prestige that strengthen a rival nation. One who stays uses that same credential to climb into elite corporations or agencies that shape American culture, policy, and economy. Why would we seed our leadership class with foreign nationals from our chief adversary?
This also raises the question of whom our universities exist to serve. In a Fox News interview, Howard Lutnick admitted outright that these Chinese students would displace Americans from top universities. That isn’t speculation; it’s an open admission. Under an America First agenda, displacing native students for the children of foreign rivals is indefensible. Taxpayer-backed institutions must put American children first.
The bailout excuse
Lutnick argues that Chinese students keep universities solvent. Foreign students pay higher tuition and receive less aid. So what? The idea that universities are too big to fail and must be bailed out with foreign visas is laughable. Many schools already hoard enormous endowments. If others collapse, that’s the market working. Republicans once opposed bailouts for failing businesses. Why make an exception for universities that train activists and foreigners to despise America?
RELATED:‘Paperwork Americans’ are not your countrymen
The truth is that universities are ideology factories. They churn out left-wing radicals who hate America and despise Christianity. Yes, we still need doctors and engineers, but there is no reason to subsidize this industry with mass immigration. Republicans should be forcing universities to purge their bias or lose government funding. Instead, they are keeping them afloat with students from a hostile foreign power.
America First means Americans first
Trump often makes sweeping statements he never intends to enact. This may be a bargaining ploy in negotiations with Xi Jinping. But sovereignty should never be a chip in trade talks. Chinese enrollment peaked at 372,000 in 2020 and fell to 277,000 in 2024. Now the administration is talking about more than doubling it. The correct number isn’t 600,000. It isn’t 277,000. It’s zero.
The United States should stop importing enemies to enrich its ruling class. American universities should exist for Americans. That is what America First must mean.
The real fraud in higher ed: Universities need that Chinese money
The universities preaching that America is structurally racist now say they need international students to survive. Sad but true.
President Trump on Monday floated a proposal that has conservatives buzzing. Just before meeting with the president of South Korea, while discussing trade negotiations with China, Trump suggested that the deal might include allowing 600,000 Chinese students to attend American universities.
Instead of winning hearts and minds, universities would be exporting American self-loathing. Why should taxpayers fund that?
I’ve learned not to sprint ahead of Trump’s negotiations. He often uses public remarks as part of the bargaining table — dangling outrageous possibilities to shove the other side into error. And inconveniently for his critics, it usually works. Still, this one deserves a closer look.
Universities built on sand
As a professor at Arizona State University, the nation’s largest state school, I see firsthand how fragile higher education has become. Universities increasingly depend on international students to prop up their budgets. They reorient themselves not around local students but around foreign ones, reshaping programs and communications to make sure outsiders feel at home.
ASU boasts 195,000 students. Yet when the semester began, the university’s homepage highlighted international arrivals, not Arizona students. The welcome-back email did the same. Arizona families — the taxpayers who actually fund the place — were treated as an afterthought.
Administrators justify this by pointing to economic contributions, diversity, and talent. But native students notice the slight. Parents notice it too. The message is clear: Tuition dollars matter more than the citizens who built these schools. ASU may call itself the “New American University,” but more often it presents itself as the “No Longer American University.”
RELATED: Chinese nationals on student visas allegedly ripped off elderly Americans in nasty scheme
A house of cards
Here’s the truth: Many American universities cannot survive without international tuition checks.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick admitted as much on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show, saying the bottom 15% of U.S. colleges would simply shut down without that revenue. Universities have operated like Ponzi schemes, built on the illusion that enrollment growth never ends. But as American students tire of being hectored with radical political agendas, growth slows and the budgets collapse.
The U.S. already hosts about 270,000 Chinese students, not counting tens of thousands more from India, South Korea, and elsewhere. ASU alone has 16,000 international students, down from 18,000 last year. Trump’s proposed deal would more than double the number of Chinese students nationwide overnight.
What are they learning?
Even if you grant the economic benefits, the bigger question — maybe the biggest — is: What sort of education would these 600,000 students receive?
We could introduce them to the greatness of the American experiment, the sweep of Western civilization, and the biblical truths that shaped both. We could even present the gospel to hundreds of thousands of students who may never have heard it before. That would be a noble exchange.
But that isn’t what happens on most campuses.
Drop them into a humanities classroom and they’ll be steeped in anti-racism, DEI dogma, LGBTQ activism, “decolonizing the curriculum,” and the thesis that America and the West are irredeemably wicked. Instead of winning hearts and minds, universities would be exporting American self-loathing — either by turning foreign students into residents who despise their host country or sending them home as ambassadors of contempt.
Why should American taxpayers fund that?
A higher-ed reckoning
Universities like ASU showcase international students while sidelining their own. They rely on foreign tuition to mask fiscal rot. And in exchange, they sell a curriculum that treats America as racist, the West as evil, and Christianity as oppressive.
No “economic benefit” offsets that catastrophic formula.
If American universities want to survive, they must first clean their own house.
- Admit the harm caused by their reckless anti-America, anti-West, anti-Christian curriculum.
- Abandon DEI dogma, corrosive identity politics, and “decolonized” philosophy.
- Value American students — the citizens and taxpayers who fund these schools.
- Reorient higher education toward the people of the states and communities that built it.
- Teach again that we are created by God, equal in worth, and capable of knowing truth, goodness, and beauty.
Only then can we discuss whether more international students make sense. Until then, it is rich with irony: The same universities that teach contempt for America now admit they need foreign students to survive.
'Another capitulation': Canada caves to Trump, dropping retaliatory tariffs
Months after scrapping its digital service tax in the face of threats from President Donald Trump, Canada's liberal government has caved once again.
This time, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney — who put on quite the show about defying the U.S. while campaigning for office earlier this year — announced on Friday that Canada is dropping retaliatory tariffs on a number of American products in hopes of improving both relations with the White House and outcomes in future trade talks with the United States.
Canada was one of the only countries in the world that retaliated against Trump's tariffs, imposing three rounds of retaliatory measures, reported the Globe and Mail. These measures included a 25% tariff on roughly $21 billion of American goods including orange juice and motorcycles and a 25% tariff on American cars.
Citing Trump's tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, "substantial trade actions" on the Canadian lumber industry, Trump's reciprocal and sectoral tariffs, and recent deals struck between the U.S. and other countries, Carney noted that "the breadth and depth of the changes in U.S. trade policy have become more fully apparent."
"Under the new U.S. approach, countries must now 'buy access to the world’s largest economy' through tariffs, investments, unilateral trade liberalization, and policy changes in their home markets," said the prime minister.
Carney attempted to put a positive spin on the situation, stating that as a result of America's reaffirmation that Canadian exports to the U.S. that are compliant with the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement won't be subject to IEEPA tariffs, the "actual U.S. average tariff rate on Canadian goods is 5.6% and remains the lowest among all its trading partners, and more than 85% of Canada-U.S. trade is now tariff-free."
In the interest of preserving what Carney framed as "the best trade deal with the United States," the prime minister said that effective Sept. 1, Canada will remove all of its tariffs on American good specifically covered under the CUSMA.
Canada, like the U.S., will, however, retain tariffs on steel, aluminum, and automobiles.
'He is showing extraordinary weakness.'
"The United States is the world’s largest, most dynamic economy, and Canada is one of its most important commercial partners," said Carney.
"Canada is the second-largest foreign investor in the U.S., and many of our companies are essential to the complex supply chains that drive American competitiveness," continued the prime minister. "Canada is embarking on a transformation of our military and security capabilities to defend Canadians — investments that will create multiple opportunities for new defense and security partnerships."
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday that he had a "very good call with Prime Minister Carney of Canada yesterday morning," that "we want to be very good to Canada," and that the removal of the tariffs was "nice."
Canadian Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre mocked Carney, calling the tariff removal "another capitulation and climbdown by Mark Carney," reported Canadian state media.
"Today, he removed even almost all the tariffs on the United States and got none lifted for Canada," said Poilievre. "He is showing extraordinary weakness."
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Fed chair Powell signals potential rate cuts — but Trump says it’s ‘too late’
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell signaled on Friday that he may consider cutting interest rates in the near future.
During a speech at an annual gathering in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Powell hinted at the possibility of changes to interest rates at the next September meeting due to a "shifting balance of risks."
'I personally believe the Fed could cut a full percent and still not have policy unleash inflationary pressures, but I don't foresee a cut that substantial in September.'
He contended that the Federal Reserve's "restrictive policy stance" has been "appropriate to help bring down inflation and to foster a sustainable balance between aggregate demand and supply."
Powell blamed "higher tariffs" for introducing "new challenges" to the U.S. economy and "tighter immigration policy" for causing an "abrupt slowdown in labor force growth." He contended that both factors have impacted demand and supply.
"Over the longer run, changes in tax, spending, and regulatory policies may also have important implications for economic growth and productivity," Powell claimed. "There is significant uncertainty about where all of these policies will eventually settle and what their lasting effects on the economy will be."
RELATED: Powell’s tight money policy is strangling the US economy
He argued that "risks to inflation are tilted to the upside and risks to employment to the downside." Powell called it a "challenging situation" given that the Fed's "framework calls for us to balance both sides of our dual mandate," referring to the labor market and price stability.
However, he indicated that with the policy rate "100 basis points closer to neutral" compared to last year and stability in labor market measures, the Federal Reserve may "proceed carefully as we consider changes to our policy stance."
"Nonetheless, with policy in restrictive territory, the baseline outlook and the shifting balance of risks may warrant adjusting our policy stance," Powell said.
RELATED: Trump orders Labor Statistics chief to be fired over revisions in weak jobs report
President Donald Trump has repeatedly urged Powell to drop interest rates.
"He should have cut them a year ago. He's too late," Trump said Friday afternoon in response to Powell's speech.
Blaze Media contributor Carol Roth told Blaze News, "Reading between the lines, it certainly sounded like Powell was signaling a higher likelihood of a September rate cut, something that the market had already been expecting. In terms of the Fed's stated 'dual mandate,' the pendulum seems to be swinging to more concern over the labor market than inflation, although certainly not ignoring inflation, but rather wanting to avoid a stagflation scenario," Roth said.
"Powell is definitely late to a rate cut, both in terms of supporting the economy and giving the Fed room in terms of future ability to raise rates in the face of any potential spikes in inflation," Roth continued. "While 25 basis points (one quarter of a percent) is the likely size of a cut, it probably isn't enough to be meaningful in terms of consumer or business behavior — it seems more symbolic. I personally believe the Fed could cut a full percent and still not have policy unleash inflationary pressures, but I don't foresee a cut that substantial in September."
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
America First is driving jobs and a welcome corporate return
“They’re coming home — they’re all coming home.”
That’s how President Donald Trump described Apple’s decision to invest $600 billion in the American economy, $100 billion more than initially expected.
For decades, corporate America packed up and left. Under President Trump, companies are coming back.
Standing alongside Apple CEO Tim Cook, President Trump declared: “These investments will directly create more than 20,000 brand-new American jobs and many thousands more at Apple suppliers like Corning, Broadcom, Texas Instruments, and Samsung.”
This is proof that the America First agenda is working.
Bringing industry back
America First isn’t just a campaign slogan. It’s a movement rooted in economic patriotism. For decades, global corporations were incentivized to offshore jobs and close American factories, leaving once-thriving towns in economic ruin.
President Trump is reversing that damage. His America First agenda creates the conditions for companies to thrive here at home — cutting taxes, slashing red tape, rebuilding infrastructure, and putting American workers first in trade deals and policy decisions.
Apple’s investment is just the latest example. From Silicon Valley to the Rust Belt, companies are responding favorably to the president’s policies, which are rewarding their investments on U.S. soil.
In the past six months alone, more than $17 trillion in new investment, factories, and infrastructure projects have been announced. From semiconductor plants in Arizona to advanced steel manufacturing in Pennsylvania, we are witnessing the rebirth of American manufacturing.
Challenging China
And America First doesn’t stop at building new factories. It also means building the capacity to win strategic fights — including the tech war with China.
One example is the Trump administration’s recent decision toheed U.S. intelligence experts and greenlight the merger between Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Juniper Networks.
For years, national security experts have warned about Huawei, the Chinese tech giant with deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Huawei’s global dominance in 5G and enterprise networking poses a serious threat to cybersecurity, national defense, and communications freedom. The problem wasn’t identifying the threat. The problem was that no U.S. company could match Huawei — that is, until now. Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi are helping the U.S. finally compete in this industry.
Another example is President Trump’s executive order jump-starting America’s rare-earth and critical mineral supply chains — an industry China has dominated for years. From electric vehicles to advanced weapons systems, the modern economy runs on rare-earths. Yet for too long, America depended on Chinese exports to power everything from smartphones to fighter jets.
That is changing under President Trump, who signed an executive order cutting red tape, fast-tracking permits, and directing federal agencies to prioritize American sourcing and refining of rare-earth and critical minerals. As a result, U.S. companies are now increasingly investing in domestic mining operations in America, laying the foundation for greater American economic independence.
In June, Trump even signed an agreement with China to resume exports of U.S. rare-earth minerals. The global tide on U.S. exports is now turning.
RELATED: The founder betting big on American manufacturing
America First is winning
America First means just that: America first. Whether it’s encouraging companies such as Apple to invest here at home or ensuring that U.S. tech companies can go toe to toe with China, President Trump is delivering real results.
For decades, corporate America packed up and left. Under President Trump, companies are coming back. They’re investing in our people, our cities, and our future. That’s not just good policy. That’s what winning looks like.
Trump’s tariffs won’t stop India’s tech takeover
President Donald Trump blasted India with 50% tariffs, which are set to take effect August 27. These tariffs reflect Trump’s instinct that India is becoming the next China — and he’s spot-on.
Unfortunately, the tariffs will do little to stop this. Why? Because India isn’t coming for our manufacturing. They’re coming for our technology sector — and they’ve been remarkably successful both at scooping up jobs and flying under the radar.
Bangalore is booming. Boston is becoming a bust. What’s going on?
Since 2001, America has lost roughly 5 million jobs to China. During the same period, America lost up to 4 million technology jobs to India. Moreover, India now has access to sensitive American technology and information.
This is beyond an economic issue; it’s a silent national emergency.
If we are serious about reshoring American industry, then tariffs on Indian products won’t cut it. We should also tariff Indian services.
Made in Mumbai
India’s technology industry is bustling. In 2024, technology made up approximately 7% of India’s GDP. The industry employs 5.4 million people and added 126,000 new jobs last year alone. Revenue was up 5.1% year over year.
Technology is transforming India. Cities like Bangalore boast newly minted billionaires and skyscrapers. Meanwhile, technology employment in many major American cities, like Boston, is stagnating.
Bangalore is booming. Boston is becoming a bust. What’s going on?
One word: offshoring.
Increasingly, American companies are moving their production of digital services to India. Why? Because Indian labor is cheap. Consider that the average American technology worker earns $110,000 per year. Meanwhile, their Indian counterparts earn about $32,000 — Indians work for one-third the price.
Why hire an American when you can hire an Indian to do the same job for a fraction of the price?
Offshoring explains the rapid growth of India’s technology sector, 80% of which comes from exports alone — far more than China at the same stage of its rise in 2001.
Interestingly, America’s trade deficit in services with India was just $3.2 billion — fairly small when compared with other countries. This has given the false impression that offshoring is not a problem.
The reality is much more grim. The scale of offshoring is obscured by the fact that Indian services — which are largely “branch plants” of American technology companies — also service non-American markets.
RELATED: Why tariffs beat treaties in a world that cheats
America’s tech giants rake in large profits by offshoring production to India. In turn, India’s government collects the tax revenue, and Indian people benefit from new jobs. But as usual, the American people don’t factor into this equation — yet another example of Wall Street screwing over ordinary Americans.
The price of a rupee
In my book “Reshore: How Tariffs Will Bring Our Jobs Home and Revive the American Dream,”I explain how offshoring hurts American workers in three main ways.
First, it relocates American jobs abroad, causing unemployment. Second, it suppresses wages by flooding the labor market with laid-off workers and by putting Americans in direct wage competition with cheaper foreign workers. Third, it redirects investment — especially in education — from the United States to India.
How many technology jobs have been lost to India? Although the exact number is impossible to calculate, we can estimate. A good starting point is to look at the number of Indian jobs supported by U.S. dollars. Remember, 5.4 million Indians work in the technology sector, and 80% of the revenue comes from exports — mostly purchased by the United States.
Why hire an American when you can hire an Indian to do the same job, for a fraction of the price?
If we assume a one-to-one corollary between an Indian job and an American job, then we can guess that 4.3 million jobs have been displaced. In reality, this is probably too generous — Americans are more productive than their Indian counterparts. Either way, the number of lost jobs are in the millions.
And those job losses ripple through the labor market.
Displaced workers compete for fewer domestic jobs, driving down wages. At the same time, employers can offshore tech services to India with ease, which drags wages down further.
It’s a global race to the bottom — and American workers have the farthest to fall.
Offshoring more than jobs
But an even more nefarious cost of offshoring hits directly at our kids’ futures. Offshoring reduces the demand for skilled labor in America and increases it in India, incentivizing investment ineducation abroad while neglecting our own schools. It’s not only cheaper to hire Indians, it’s also cheaper to train them.
The proof is in the pudding. In 2004, 51,000 Americans graduated with computer science degrees and 4,000 in software engineering. By 2024, these numbers had doubled to approximately 100,000 and 8,000 respectively — not bad.
RELATED: Read it and weep: Tariffs work, and the numbers prove it
However, when compared to India, 80,000 Indian students graduated with computer science degrees in 2004 and 5,000 in software engineering. By 2024, these numbers had tripled to over 250,000 and 15,000 respectively. Despite having a much smaller technology industry that is entirely dependent on American investment, India now trains more people for the technology industry than the country that hires them — and the number of graduates is increasing faster.
American technology companies demand educated Indians rather than educated Americans. As such, major American technology companies pour money into Indian universities.
Bring services back home
The United States has been pillaged for decades. The inability to manufacture basic goods poses a stark threat to the nation. The same is increasingly true of technology services: Americans are taking the back seat in education, employment, and innovation.
President Trump’s instincts on tariffs are correct, but regarding India, the reality is that tariffs are akin to fighting last year’s war. We need to either tariff offshored services or tax the wages paid to foreigners so that there is no cost advantage to hiring Indians (or anyone else). If not, America will depend on foreigners for goods and services — and there will be nothing left at home.
Trump’s next tariff should slap the service-sector sellouts
Even skeptics now hail President Trump’s tariffs on foreign goods as a major win for the American economy. Goods and services form the backbone of economic activity and trade. As groundbreaking as Trump’s tariff policies have been, the next step to secure a new American golden age is clear: Target the theft of American service-sector jobs.
Trump’s America First doctrine reshaped the U.S. political and economic landscape. It put the forgotten worker back at the center of policy, revived domestic manufacturing, and challenged the long-entrenched dogma of globalist free trade. But one glaring weakness remains — the mass offshoring of service-sector jobs, especially in call centers and customer support, to low-wage countries.
Mr. President, make the service sector American again.
Trump can fix this. The most effective tool is a targeted tariff on companies that ship service jobs overseas.
Most Americans know about the loss of manufacturing jobs. Fewer realize the scale of the service-industry exodus.
Pick up the phone to call customer service and the odds are high you’ll hear a voice thousands of miles from U.S. soil. Companies offshore call centers, IT help desks, software engineering, and back-office support to places like India and the Philippines, where workers earn a fraction of U.S. wages.
These jobs once anchored communities across the Midwest and South, providing stable, middle-class incomes without requiring a college degree. Today, millions of American workers — especially women, rural residents, and non-college-educated individuals — have been displaced. Many now settle for lower-paying, unstable, often part-time work.
At the same time, offshoring heightens data privacy risks, and foreign call centers operate with little or no U.S. oversight.
The practice isn’t limited to a few bad actors. Many Fortune 500 companies — Amazon, AT&T, Bank of America, Capital One, Citibank, Google, JPMorgan Chase, Walmart, Wells Fargo, Target, and Verizon — all run offshore call centers in India and the Philippines. Many smaller firms do the same. For every call center in the United States, at least 10 operate overseas.
The numbers are staggering. The Philippines leads with an estimated 1.3 to 1.5 million call center workers. India follows closely with 1.1 to 1.3 million. Mexico, another popular outsourcing hub, employs more than 700,000 in the field.
RELATED: Main Street’s silent plea: Exempt us from the next tariffs
Trump has already proven tariffs can work, using them to force China to the negotiating table and to secure America First trade deals with the U.K., EU, and others. A service-import tariff would build on those wins.
Such a tariff could be assessed on every foreign-based call center employee serving U.S. customers. Companies that move jobs offshore after taking taxpayer bailouts or contracts could face additional tax penalties.
This isn’t protectionism — it’s patriotism. American tax dollars shouldn’t subsidize the destruction of American jobs.
Tariffs on offshored service-sector jobs could bring millions of positions back to U.S. soil. Trump has already targeted foreign goods. Now, it’s time for the second shoe to drop: Target foreign services.
Mr. President, make the service sector American again.
Democrats can’t handle a Trump recovery
The Department of Labor reported on August 1 that the U.S. unemployment rate ticked up slightly in July to 4.2%. Employers added just 73,000 jobs — well below the 110,000 economists had projected.
Democrats pounced immediately.
This isn’t economic chaos. It’s called a comeback.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) claimed the report showed Americans are “paying the price” for “Donald Trump’s destructive trade war.” He called the data an illustration of “economic chaos.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) — already positioning himself for a 2028 presidential run — declared that Trump is “crashing our economy” and insisted, “We haven’t seen conditions like these since 2020.”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D) of Connecticut said the economy was “chaotic and full of corruption.” He later wrote on X: “Companies don’t want to create jobs in Trump’s chaos economy with weakening rule of law and rampant corruption.”
But the reality is far less dramatic than the rhetoric.
Numbers in context
Yes, the July jobs report was underwhelming. But it was far from catastrophic.
The 4.2% unemployment rate in July 2025 is the same as it was in July 2024 — and in March, April, May, August, and November of last year. The rate has held steady for months. In what way is that “crashing our economy”? That’s called consistency.
By contrast, unemployment rose significantly during President Biden’s final year in office. In July 2023, the rate was 3.5%. A year later, just before Biden dropped out of the 2024 race, it had climbed to 4.2%.
The fact is, Trump didn’t inherit a strong economy. He got Biden’s inflation, stagnation, and policy uncertainty. So what we’re seeing now is more of a course correction, not a crash.
Signs of progress
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, full-time employment has grown by 1.1 million over the past 12 months. Layoffs in July were down 15% year over year.
Gross domestic product also rebounded. The Commerce Department reports that U.S. economic output rose 3% in the second quarter of 2025, reversing a 0.5% contraction in the first.
None of this suggests economic free fall. It suggests recovery.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has brokered major trade agreements with key global players and secured historic investment deals — moves that will pay off in the years ahead.
Japan pledged to invest $550 billion in U.S. industries, and Saudi Arabia agreed to $600 billion in new investments. In May, the United Arab Emirates agreed to more than $200 billion in commercial deals, on top of a $1.4 trillion commitment earlier this year to back emerging technologies.
Domestic investment is ramping up
American companies are also stepping up in response to Trump’s pro-business regulatory agenda.
Apple this week reached an agreement with the White House to commit another $100 million to domestic manufacturing. This follows the tech giant’s announcement in February of plans to spend more than $500 billion in the U.S. over four years, focusing on operations in Arizona, California, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, and North Carolina.
IBM pledged $150 billion over five years.
RELATED: Powell’s tight money policy is strangling the US economy
Eli Lilly in February committed $27 billion for new domestic manufacturing, including four new plants. That initiative alone will create more than 3,000 permanent jobs and 10,000 construction jobs.
These investments are not instant, but they are real — and they will reshape America’s economy.
The real panic is political
The Democrats’ sudden alarm over a flat unemployment rate reveals more about their political fears than economic facts. A strengthening Trump economy threatens their narrative — and their electoral strategy.
They’re hoping manufactured panic can drown out progress. But Americans can see what’s really happening.
The July jobs report may have missed expectations, but the broader trend is unmistakable. Trump is rebuilding what Biden’s policies eroded. Jobs are returning. Investment is growing. Stability is taking root.
This isn’t economic chaos. It’s called a comeback.
Today's top stories
www.theblaze.com