On Thursday’s broadcast of NewsNation’s “The Hill,” White House Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing Peter Navarro responded to a question on why, so far in 2026, we haven’t hit the GDP growth milestones referenced by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and predicted by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick by saying that “we think we’re doing quite well.” And “We’re happy with where we’re going. We need to message this more effectively, because the news is good, but we have trouble, because when we go on the news shows, they want to point out bad things.” But we would have 3% without the “very big drag” of not having a rate cut.
Host Blake Burman referenced the 3% GDP growth referenced by Bessent and then played video of Lutnick saying there will be 6% annual GDP growth under Trump and then asked why we haven’t had that so far this year.
Navarro responded, “If you look at our economy, we think we’re doing quite well. I head the Office of Trade and Manufacturing, okay. Our playbook right now is to onshore our production, bring our factories and jobs home, both for economic prosperity and national security. We are having, because of two things, the tariffs bringing investment onshore, and the 100% expensing of factories, we are seeing, first, a construction boom that’s been going on almost from day one of the administration. It’s now, over the past six months, translated into strong manufacturing jobs. We’re having a manufacturing boom. Inflation, the core is trending down. And we are growing the GDP in a nice, sustained way. We’re happy with where we’re going. We need to message this more effectively, because the news is good, but we have trouble, because when we go on the news shows, they want to point out bad things. … Real wages, which [are] our benchmark for blue collar workers, [are] doing quite well…we have, obviously, a supply shock now.”
Navarro added, “I can tell you this, if Jay Powell had cut rates early in our administration, we probably would have hit the 3% that Bessent remarked. That’s been a very big drag on our economy.”
Navarro also said that “the biggest problems we have are the headwinds from the Democrats.”
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