Democrats warned Friday that the unexpectedly poor jobs report signaled that the economy could sink into a recession, casting the downturn as a consequence of President Trump’s decision to focus on foreign entanglements rather than issues at home.
“Today’s jobs report underscores the complete wreckage of Trump and Republicans’ agenda,” Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said in a statement, offering a preview of how her party is expected to address the economy going into the midterm elections this fall. “Their failed policies have led to job losses, higher prices and a weaker economy.”
Democrats have made the economy a focal point in this year’s elections, blaming Mr. Trump and his party for not doing more to rein in prices. Mr. Trump has defended his economic policies, including a tariff regime that the Supreme Court has curtailed.
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, said in a statement that the report was a “blaring alarm” that the economy was teetering on the edge of recession and might soon “go over the cliff.”
“The Trump Republican agenda is failing the American people,” Mr. Schumer added, blaming Mr. Trump’s chaotic tariff policy for the weak job numbers and noting that since the start of the war in Iran, gas prices had risen sharply.
Before the report, JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank, placed the odds of a recession this year at 33 percent. The weak data could darken that outlook, some have warned. Ryan Sweet, the chief U.S. economist at the advisory firm Oxford Economics, said recession odds would go up, in part because the economy was buffeted by other factors, including a stock market that has been rattled by the spiking oil prices.
Kevin A. Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, which oversees economic policy in the White House, conceded that the jobs numbers were a surprise. But he urged Americans to take a longer view of the economy and sought to tie the jobs numbers to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
“If you take the average over a few months, we had a surprisingly positive one last month and a surprisingly negative one this one,” he told CNBC. “But on average, it’s about what we expect to be seeing, because immigration has gone down by so much.”
He added, “The economy is really strong.”
Democrats were not sold.
“This president prides himself off of chaos, but that is not something that is good for our economy,” Senator Andy Kim, Democrat of New Jersey, said in an interview. “The president has just constantly been playing with fire when it comes to American families’ savings.”
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