Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is jazzing up his song and dance to further distract from the cooling economy.
Speaking with CNBC Thursday, the trade official hypothesized that the real benefits of Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs would be realized very soon—that is to say, next year.
“So now, everybody knows their tariff, right? So now you’re going to see factories getting built in America at a scale that you’ve never seen before,” Lutnick said. “More than $10 trillion of factory build coming. Alright? And so theres huge amount of construction jobs.”
“I would say the first quarter of next year will be the best quarter of construction jobs this country’s ever seen, and that’s going to roll all the way through ’26,” he continued. “So I think you’re gonna see GDP growth next year over four percent.”
“You do? Four percent? $10 trillion over what period of time, Secretary?” pressed one of the anchors.
But Lutnick’s perpetual growth promises have historically not panned out. Americans still weren’t feeling the boon of Trump’s plan by August, when the unemployment rate was 4.3 percent, up by more than 3 percent from the previous year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Applications for unemployment benefits jumped to 263,000 last week alone, the biggest spike since the pandemic, and consumer inflation grew to 2.9 percent last month—the highest point so far this year.
In the same interview, Lutnick once again said that major trade deals were still on the way—albeit with some major hiccups. A deal with India is apparently forthcoming, so long as the country “stops buying Russian oil.” Lutnick also claimed that a “big deal with Taiwan” is on the horizon, that a deal with Switzerland is “probably” in the works, and that a trade arrangement had been struck with South Korea, though Lutnick suggested that the country’s officials were dragging their feet with the paperwork. (South Korea has also threatened to indefinitely pause multiple projects in the U.S. in light of a massive ICE raid at a Hyundai factory in Georgia that saw hundreds of Korean workers arrested.)
Lutnick also said that he believed a “deal is going to be struck” on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-sponsored enterprises to support American homeownership, before the end of the year.
“We are going to take the company public. We’re going to sell. It could potentially be the largest IPO in history,” he said.
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