Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs at the U.S. Treasury Department Monica Crowley told Breitbart News that President Donald Trump’s “economic freedom agenda” has sparked the highly successful economic growth that has now led to the lowest unemployment rate in half a century.
This past week, the administration announced that unemployment has fallen to 3.5 percent—the lowest since 1969—after a November jobs surge of 266,000 jobs created last month, numbers that blew away expectations.
“Boom! These jobs numbers are absolutely incredible and breathtaking in the number of jobs being created and as you point out the historically low unemployment rate across the board,” Crowley said in reaction to these statistics in an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM 125 the Patriot Channel this weekend. “What it shows is President Trump’s economic freedom agenda is working, literally working, as a record number of Americans are in the workforce and unemployment is at a 50-year low. Unemployment among key groups—African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and women—are at or near all-time lows. The jobs being created, unlike previous years under previous presidents, many of these jobs are career-track jobs. When the opponents of the president claim these aren’t real jobs, or they’re temporary jobs or they’re go-nowhere jobs, that is fundamentally untrue. What we saw in the November jobs report is 266,000 jobs created smashing every expectation that we saw, and the previous two jobs numbers from October and September—those jobs numbers were revised up.”
What’s more, Crowley noted, is that since Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton in November 2016, the U.S. economy has created more than 7 million new jobs—greater than last year’s population of the entire state of Massachusetts—and millions more than the experts expected.
“Since the president’s election in November 2016, the economy has added more than 7 million jobs,” Crowley said. “This is more than the entire population of Massachusetts last year. It’s also 5.1 million more jobs than the Congressional Budget Office, CBO, projected in its final forecast before the 2016 election. What it shows is common sense economic policies based on freedom work. Tax cuts, deregulation, unleashing the energy sector, and trying to realign international trade—all of which this president promised during the campaign, all of which he has delivered. That, in turn, is delivering us this incredible economy.”
Perhaps more importantly than the job growth and historic lows in unemployment is that in November wages rose by 3.1 percent over the last 12 months as well. That means Americans not only have better prospects of finding employment when they want to, but they’re taking home more money when they do find that job. What’s more, among working class and blue collar workers, wages rose at 3.7 percent—higher than the average worker—which means Trump’s economy is helping the very people he set out to help when he launched his 2016 presidential campaign by pledging to stand up for American workers and families left behind by the nation’s elites.
“That’s a critical point and it dovetails with my earlier point about not only can people get jobs, but anybody who wants to work in America can now find a job—and it’s now more likely that you will be on an upward trajectory and will be making more money in that job,” Crowley said. “Then you are also better positioned to have an even better job with even greater pay—3.1 percent year over year wage growth in the private sector. In October, it marked the 16th consecutive month that wage growth has been at or above 3 percent. That’s astonishing. There’s another really important data point, and that is that for essentially blue collar workers—non-supervisory and production workers—their wages grew at a faster clip and a greater pace than the average worker. Theirs grew at 3.7 percent year over year. That’s a post-recession high, and we’re calling it a blue collar boom.”
Crowley laid out during her interview on Breitbart News Saturday how President Trump’s policies are the reason why this economy is booming. She explained there are four “core pillars” to Trump’s economic vision, all of which he is responsible for implementing: tax cuts, deregulation, energy production expansion, and a realignment in international trade.
“When he was running in 2016, it was on an America first platform. When he became president, he made sure his economic agenda just like his foreign policy agenda and everything else is based on putting the United States of America first, putting taxpayers first, and putting the American worker first,” Crowley said. “So, his economic freedom agenda is based on a couple of core pillars. First, it was the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act [TCJA] from two years ago now. This was December 21, 2017, President Trump signed the tax reform into law. At Treasury, my team and I are leading the charge across the administration to help mark the second year anniversary of this. We have a campaign—if you don’t follow me on Twitter already, my official account is @TreasurySpox and @USTreasury, those two accounts. We have launched an official campaign to remind the American people and the American worker about how TCJA has benefitted every American. Tax reform was the first element of this. Deregulation is the second pillar. President Trump has come in and uprooted root and branch these burdensome regulations that have hit small businesses in particular but really all businesses during the previous administration and beyond. President Trump has come in and cleaned up the regulatory process and deregulated so that businesses of all sizes can flourish without the heavy hand of government on them. The third pillar is unleashing the energy sector—coal, oil, pipelines, et cetera—that energy boom has made the United States energy independent. And trade reform—he has struck major trade deals with South Korea, Japan, Canada, and Mexico.”
At this time, a major trade deal that would replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) called the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA) is awaiting a vote in the House but Speaker Nancy Pelosi is currently blocking it from coming to a vote. Crowley said that she hopes Pelosi proves she does not hate President Trump—as Pelosi claimed this past week that she does not hate him—by allowing this deal to the floor for a vote.
“I hope that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats can see their way past politics and past their hatred of this president in addition to all the impeachment nonsense and bring USMCA to a vote,” Crowley said. “That is an incredible trade deal. You know what people don’t appreciate that this president got two foreign countries—Canada and Mexico—to agree to this. You know how hard that is for any president to do? He negotiated a fantastic huge win for the American people and the American worker in USMCA. Mrs. Pelosi, I hope, would bring it to a vote not because it’s going to benefit any political party but because it’s going to benefit the country.”
USMCA would by most estimates create another 175,000 jobs—maybe more—meaning that if and when it is ratified and signed into law it could lead to even greater economic success than the Trump administration has already been able to secure for Americans.
“You know how there’s a lot of attention on the ongoing China trade talks and I understand because trade with China is sexier,” Crowley said. “But frankly USMCA, just in terms of substance and what it would mean in terms for America, is a huge, huge deal. The president, when he was running for office, and announced his campaign for president, he promised he would negotiate fairer trade for American workers and stop decades of bad deals that have shipped American jobs and wealth and prosperity overseas. So, President Trump is the first American president in recent memory trying to realign international trade. When you take a step back and you think about this, this is a president—this is a man—who has never done any of this before. He never ran for dog catcher before he ran for president and he is delivering a booming economy to some extent because of these trade deals. Specifically on the USMCA, this is about scrapping the outdated NAFTA deal which was a bad deal to begin with and then has been in place for 30 years. NAFTA, Canada and Mexico—because we’re in the North American hemisphere, we’re so closely aligned geographically and economically. Our biggest trading partners are those two nations. President Trump came in and said we’re going to rebalance our trading relationship with those nations, who are the closest to us in so many ways. We are going to modernize it and we are going to strengthen and rebalance the rules of trade and investment with our two most important trading partners.”
Crowley said that the votes are there in the House—and it would “pass resoundingly” should Pelosi call it for a vote now.
“This, if it passes, and I agree with you—if the vote were called today, tomorrow, or Monday morning—it would pass resoundingly,” Crowley said. “Mrs. Pelosi is getting an earful from her moderate members especially those 30 to 40 Democrats who were elected in Trump districts as well as those who were elected across the industrial midwest who are telling her: ‘We need this. We need this deal for our districts, for our states, and for the country.’ And by the way, California, her home state, would benefit hugely from this deal. Mrs. Pelosi, I mean she is a creature of the left anyway but she’s being pulled even further to the left by ‘The Squad’ and the radical revolutionaries in her party. Because of the impeachment nonsense, the politics of this are maddening. I think if she could see past the politics and bring this to a vote, it would pass and you would see an immediate boom in the economy, you would see an immediate climb in GDP, you would see an immediate climb in job creation, and so on—and again, this is something where everyone would benefit. This is not about the president or the Republican Party. This is for the country. Frankly, it’s political malpractice I think for the congressional leadership not to bring this for a vote when it so clearly would be such a huge victory.”
Crowley wrapped the interview by dismissing claims from Trump critics that there is a looming recession. Those critics have been saying for months that a recession is coming, but their predictions have not come true—and so Crowley said she agreed that the economy appears to be staying strong heading into 2020, a solid sign for President Trump in an election year. If the Congress finally agrees to pass the USMCA, too, it could even better than it is right now.
“People smarter than me on these issues like Larry Kudlow and others say the exact same thing,” Crowley said. “We saw over the summer a lot of the recession mongers on the business networks and so on saying that they saw things that were on the horizon, the inverted yield curve and so on. But what we see in the core numbers here, the unemployment, wage growth, job creation, GDP, consumer confidence, what you see across the board is that the American worker, the American taxpayer, the American people are increasingly confident in this economy. They’re spending, they’re putting money back into the economy, you’re seeing small business growth, you’re seeing a growing economy. And, again, it’s not a coincidence. It’s because of the president’s pro-growth policies, and the economic freedom agenda is literally working. When you hear some folks on the other side talking about the glories of socialism, the opposite of socialism is not capitalism—the opposite of socialism is freedom. This president understands that and he’s built his entire economic policy agenda based on freedom and giving the American people more freedom back so they can live their version of the American dream and build whatever they want. This is the land of opportunity and this president understands that and he has delivered—and I think the best is yet to come particularly if they will call a vote and get USMCA passed.”
LISTEN TO TREASURY’S MONICA CROWLEY ON BREITBART NEWS SATURDAY:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/txCSi9TgEqs/