Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick tried to spin the bad ADP report on CNBC, showing that the private sector lost 32,000 jobs in November, even though economists were expecting 40,000 jobs to be added. Lutnick blamed the “Democratic shutdown” and said, “Next year the numbers are going to be fantastic.” And of course, he rejected the idea that Trump’s tariff tantrums played any part in the loss of jobs.
“I do want to ask you about the recent economic data because today we learned that the private sector is losing jobs,” the CNBC host said. “Small businesses are getting hit really hard. Negative numbers in front of ADP, and one of the reasons that they cite is tariffs. So do you worry about some of the economic fallout here as these tariffs really take hold?”
“No, no, it’s not tariffs,” Lutnick insisted. Remember you had the Democratic shutdown right and what do you think happens to small business?”
“The people who do business with the U.S. government they they know they’re not getting paid, so they sort of slow down their projects,” he continued. “So you saw a little bit even of construction of small business down. So the Democratic shutdown hurt the numbers, and then remember, as you deport people, that’s gonna suppress private job numbers of small businesses.”
“But they’ll rebalance, and they’ll regrow,” he said. “So I think this is just a near-term thing, and you’ll see as the numbers come through over the next couple of months, you’ll see that all pass, and next year the numbers are going to be fantastic.”
