Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana colorfully said Friday that listening to Washington D.C. insiders about the economy might not produce the best advice or take on the situation.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported only 73,000 jobs were created in July, while figures from May and June were revised downward despite Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growing by 3% in the second quarter. Kennedy admitted that while the jobs report was not good, he cautioned that many in Washington “just don’t know what they’re talking about.”
“You’ve really got to be careful who you listen to. Everybody in Washington now seems to be an economist, and some of them just don’t know what they’re talking about. Taking their advice is like — it’s like taking the advice of a nun about sex,” Kennedy told “America Reports” co-host Sandra Smith. “And a lot of them are trying to score political points.”
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“Let me try to be as objective as I can. It wasn’t a good jobs number. It wasn’t,” Kennedy continued. “The job market is softening, our businesspeople are creating fewer jobs. But on the other hand, unemployment stayed steady at 4.2 percent. We had job growth last month annualized about 3 percent. Inflation has not spiked.”
Since July 22, Trump announced major trade deals with the European Union and Japan, as the August 1 deadline for negotiating trade deals neared. Trump announced reciprocal tariffs to address import duties and “horrendous imbalances” in trade with other countries during an April 2 Rose Garden event, before announcing the pause via an April 9 post on Truth Social.
“You’ve got to put this in perspective. I wouldn’t trade America’s economy for the economy of any other country, certainly not Europe, not China, certainly not Canada,” Kennedy told Smith. “Put things in perspective. A year and a half, two years ago, we had 9 percent inflation. Now we’re down to, you know, depending on whose numbers you believe, 2.5 to 3 percent. I thought that to get inflation down from 9 to 2 to 3, we’d have to see unemployment about 7 to 9 percent. And we haven’t. We’ve had a soft landing, and notwithstanding the jobs report, the economy’s still doing pretty good.”
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose by 2.7% year-over-year in June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported, roughly in line with expectations. Inflation hit a recent high of 9% in June 2022.
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