Today, the DNC hosted a press call with DNC Chair Ken Martin, Former National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling, and the newest member of the DNC’s People’s Cabinet, Former U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, to discuss Trump and Republicans’ disastrous economic agenda — and how it is killing American jobs while raising costs and cutting essential programs for working families. 

While Trump promised to lower costs and usher in a “golden age,” every decision he has made on the economy has steered us toward a cliff — and there are warning signs everywhere. Monthly job creation is down more than 60% compared to the Biden administration. This is the fourth straight month of weakened job growth under Trump. And a recent survey found that around only 1 in 4 business executives hold a favorable view of the year-ahead economy. U.S. employers have announced more layoffs during the first five months of this year than any year since 2020, when the pandemic drove mass layoffs — all because of the swirling uncertainty of Trump’s economic agenda.

Under Trump, prices are rising, small businesses are cutting jobs, and the rich keep getting richer — and Americans no longer trust him on the economy. 

Find highlights from the call below:

“Today’s jobs report is just one piece of a larger problem that Donald Trump, and Trump alone, has created — and he has no plans to fix it,” said DNC Chair Ken Martin. “In fact, he’s about to make things much worse for everyone but himself and his billionaire friends. His erratic trade policies have sent the markets in a tailspin, they’ve raised prices, they’ve brought down consumer confidence, and of course they’ve slowed economic growth.”

“We’re seeing, overall, a loss of confidence in the performance of the American economy,” said Katherine Tai, former U.S. Trade Representative and member of the DNC’s People’s Cabinet. “And I’ll just put this point quite simply: whether you are a small business, whether you’re a member of a working family, and whether you are just an individual, like all of us on this phone call, it is becoming more and more challenging to make basic plans about your life, about when you can take a vacation, about where you might be able to send your kids to school, about whether or not you will have a job in three to six months, and what your family income is going to look like. And, that is a result of shocks and policies that are coming from our own government and our own administration.”

“The blame lies totally in the reckless, erratic policies of the President, which are having an extraordinary impact in creating uncertainty and lack of confidence from the largest businesses thinking about new production, to small businesses who have no cushion and are are fearful that they will go out of business, to ordinary citizens,” said Gene Sperling, Former Director of National Economic Council. “And now, on top of that, the President says we’ll have a tax policy that will give more to the top 0.1%.”