Trump’s D.C. Takeover Actually About Immigration, Not Crime: Report

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.