WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump promised that 2026 would be a bumper year for economic growth, but instead it has kicked off with job losses, rising gasoline prices and more uncertainty about America's future.
In his State of the Union address less than two weeks ago, the Republican president confidently told the country: "The roaring economy is roaring like never before." The latest batch of data on jobs, pump prices and the stock market suggests that Trump's roar has started to sound far more like a whimper.
There is a gap between the boom that Trump has predicted and the volatile results he has produced -- one that could set the tone in this year's mid-term elections as he tries to defend his party's majorities in the House and Senate. With Trump's tariffs drama ongoing, the war in Iran has suddenly created inflationary concerns regarding oil and natural gas. To the White House, it is still early in the year and stronger growth is coming.
"WOW! The Golden Age of America is upon us!!!" Trump posted on social media on February 11 after the monthly jobs report showed gains of 130,000 jobs in January.
Since then, the job market has evaporated in worrisome ways.
Friday's employment report showed job losses of 92,000 in February. The January and December figures were revised downward, with December swinging to a loss of 17,000 jobs. Monthly data can be rocky, but a trend has emerged that shows an enduring weakness. Without the healthcare sector, the economy would have shed roughly 202,000 jobs since Trump became president in January 2025. Still, his administration notes that construction job gains outside of the housing sector point to future hiring growth.
Trump often brags that jobs are going to people born in the United States, rather than to immigrants. But the latest report punctured some of that argument.
The unemployment rate for people born in the US has climbed over the past 12 months to 4.7 per cent from 4.4 per cent. This means a greater share of the people who Trump said would get jobs because of his immigration crackdown are, in fact, searching for work.
"Slashing energy costs is among the most important actions we can take to bring down prices for American consumers," Trump said in a February speech in Texas just before the US and Israel attacked Iran. "Because when you cut the cost of energy, you really cut -- you just cut the cost of everything."
The president has repeatedly told Americans that keeping gas costs low would be key to defeating inflation. He has talked up the decline, citing figures that were far below the national average to assure the public that driving was getting cheaper.
But the strikes against Iran that began on February 28 have, for the moment, crushed that narrative. Prices at the pump have jumped 19 per cent over the past month to a national average of USD 3.45, according to AAA. The investment bank Goldman Sachs warned in an analyst note that, if higher oil prices persist, inflation could rise from its 2.4 per cent reading in January to 3 per cent by the end of the year.
The administration is banking on plans to contain any energy price increases, essentially betting that either the conflict will end shortly or the administration can succeed in getting more tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump advisers on Sunday sought to assure anxious Americans that surging fuel prices are a short-term problem.
"We never know exactly the time frame of this," Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNN's "State of the Union". "But in the worst case, this is a weeks, this is not a months thing."
"You know, we set the all-time record in history with the Dow going to 50,000," Trump said on Thursday at the White House.
This frequently-repeated talking point has grown stale. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, one of Trump's preferred measures of success, has dropped 5 per cent over the past month. Stocks are up during his presidency, just as they were previously when Democrat Joe Biden was president. The recent decline could be reversed if the war with Iran ends and companies see solid profits over the next year and beyond. The recent dip, however, should be a warning sign as the administration has stressed the importance of more people investing in the stock market through vehicles such as "Trump accounts" for children.
The stock market has become a barometer of how people feel about the economy, with stock investors tending to have more confidence and those without money in the markets being more pessimistic.
Joanne Hsu, the director of the University of Michigan's surveys of consumers, noted that in February, a "sizable" increase in sentiment among people owning stocks "was fully offset by a decline among consumers without stock holdings".
"Under the Biden administration, America was plagued by the nightmare of stagflation, meaning low growth and high inflation -- a recipe for misery, failure and decline," Trump said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January.
The scoreboard tells a far different story, one that makes Biden's track record in 2024 look better than Trump's performance last year. The US economy grew at a 2.8 per cent pace during Biden's last year, compared with 2.2 per cent under Trump in 2025.
As for inflation, the primary measure used by the Federal Reserve is the personal consumption expenditures price index. It was 2.6 per cent in both 2024 and 2025.