{"id":463584,"date":"2026-03-08T02:36:25","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T02:36:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/463584\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T02:36:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T02:36:25","slug":"lousy-job-growth-and-sky-high-gas-trumps-economy-is-in-crisis-and-puts-his-presidency-at-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/463584\/","title":{"rendered":"Lousy job growth and sky-high gas: Trump\u2019s economy is in crisis and puts his presidency at risk"},"content":{"rendered":"

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President Donald Trump<\/a> woke up to a gut punch Friday morning when the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the U.S. economy actually lost 92,000 jobs in February<\/a>. <\/p>\n

As if that weren\u2019t bad enough, as the day unfolded, the price of oil continued to spike as the war in Iran escalated<\/a>. It likely won\u2019t get better as the oil tankers will be less willing to sail through the Strait of Hormuz<\/a>, where about a fifth of the world\u2019s oil supply passes. <\/p>\n

Trump doesn\u2019t show any signs of backing down on war with Iran, even if Republicans don\u2019t want to call it a war. Earlier, he said he would only accept \u201cUNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER\u201d and a \u201cGREAT [and] ACCEPTABLE\u201d replacement<\/a> for its supreme leader who was killed by Israeli strikes. That means the war might drag on for longer than some Americans might want.<\/p>\n

As of Friday evening at the close of trading on Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 450 points and the price of Brent Crude oil topped out at more than $92 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate cracked $90 a barrel. So much for Attorney General Pam Bondi\u2019s brag about the Dow<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\"Wall<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Wall Street took a hit amid a poor jobs report and the price of crude oil shooting up. (Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)<\/p>\n

In total fairness to Trump, some of this is beyond the White House\u2019s control. Health care jobs took a hit thanks to a strike. But it revealed another ugly truth about Trump\u2019s economy: without growth in health care jobs, the economy has not seen much in terms of growth. <\/p>\n

And of course, Trump has refused to back down from his support for tariffs, which have caused Americans to pay more out of pocket<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a tax more significant degree by lower middle income households devoted to higher shares of budget to imported goods,\u201d Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody\u2019s, told The Independent. \u201cThey can see they’re paying more for things because of the tariffs.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

The war in Iran has already created anxiety about the price of gasoline. (AFP\/Getty)<\/p>\n

Trump is now in almost the same spot Joe Biden was in during the second year of his presidency, when the post-Covid supply shocks, aided by pent-up demand and Americans with stimulus money, saw prices shoot up while Vladimir Putin\u2019s assault on Russia caused a surge in inflation and gas prices<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The difference is that while Biden\u2019s team said inflation would be \u201ctransitory,\u201d the Trump world is not even admitting the economy faces some hiccups. Last month, Trump proudly proclaimed during his State of the Union that the United States is \u201cbigger, better, richer and stronger than ever before<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cInflation is plummeting, incomes are rising fast, the economy is roaring like never before,\u201d he said, bragging about how the price of gas had dropped precipitously. And when the Supreme Court knocked down his \u201cLiberation Day\u201d tariffs, he just invoked some new ones<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Zandi warned Americans might not buy Trump\u2019s rosy claims.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, the collective psyche was already on edge before gas started to rise, but one could imagine now, with gas prices rising and quickly, that it’s going to undermine what was already a very fragile consumer psychology,\u201d he said. \u201cSo it’s going to be very, very difficult to kind of get Americans back thinking, believing or buying into the idea that things were going at all well.\u201d<\/p>\n

All this comes in a midterm year, when many voters grow unsatisfied with a president and vote for the party not in power to serve as a check on the White House.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m sure they’re thinking, the administration is thinking about lots of different ways to kind of address this, but it’s getting for them to turn this around in terms of how people think about how things are going, and then ultimately, how they vote,\u201d Zandi said about gas prices.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t expect the president to admit that there are problems. While the White House did not put out a formal statement this morning, National Economic Council Chairman Kevin Hassett told business news outlets that things would even out after a bad month. <\/p>\n

But voters might not fully buy the argument if they continue to see high prices. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-463584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}