On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America Reports,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) stated that tariff uncertainty is “holding our economy back a tad” but “we haven’t seen any real ill effects.” And the Federal Reserve “deserves a lot of credit for…having a soft landing.” Kennedy also stated that while the jobs report wasn’t good, on the whole, the economy is doing well and President Donald Trump and Congress deserve credit for that, in addition to the Fed.
Kennedy said, “It wasn’t a good jobs number. It wasn’t. There’s — the job market is softening. Our businesspeople are creating fewer jobs. But, on the other hand, unemployment stayed steady at 4.2%. We had job growth last month, annualized, about 3%. Inflation has not spiked. Point three, you’ve got to put this in perspective. I wouldn’t trade America’s economy for the economy of any other country, certainly not Europe, not China, certainly not Canada. Put things in perspective, a year and a half, two years ago, we had 9% inflation. Now, we’re down to — depending on whose numbers you believe — 2.5% to 3%. I thought that, to get inflation down from 9 to 2 to 3, we’d have to see unemployment at about 7 to 9%. And we haven’t. We’ve had a soft landing, and, notwithstanding the jobs report, the economy’s still doing pretty good. President Trump deserves credit for that. I think Congress deserves some credit, because we passed the reconciliation bill, which hasn’t even taken effect yet, the one, big beautiful bill. But I think the Federal Reserve deserves a lot of credit for that, for getting interest rates down and having a soft landing.”
He continued, “The final point I would make, tariffs, we’re still in unknown territory on tariffs. And I think most businesses are waiting to see the dust settle and where we end up before they make any investment — major investment decisions. And that’s holding our economy back a tad. But, so far, the tariffs, we haven’t seen any real ill effects. We haven’t seen inflation. I see where the President’s coming from. We have had other countries willing to talk to us about reciprocity. So, so far, so good.”
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