President Donald Trump will create more jobs, companies will have to compete for workers, and wages will go up, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told a Breitbart News event on Friday.
“Bringing back more jobs means more competition for labor, which means we can have an elevation in salaries and not affect the competitiveness of our companies because we [won’t] have to spend as much on rules and regulations,” Duffy said.
The issue is becoming more important as Democrats present themselves as champions of “affordability” for the 2026 election.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy during a discussion with Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle on Friday, November 7, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Matthew Perdie/Breitbart News)
Trump is also talking up wage gains before the 2026 election. “These are things you have to talk about, ” he told attendees at a business meeting in Florida on November 5, adding:
It’s wonderful to do them, but if people don’t talk about them, then you can do not so well in elections. Wages for workers are rising at the fastest pace in over 60 years … We love the workers. Since I took office, wages for the typical factory worker are up $1,300. Construction workers’ pay is up $2,200, and miners are up nearly $5,000 this year alone.
“That’s good because it’s not, you know, such an extra cost to the company,” Trump told the business executives. “It really isn’t.”
In his November 7 event, Duffy did not mention migration policy while he was talking about how wages will rise in a tight labor market where employers and employees negotiate on a level playing field.
WATCH — Sean Duffy: Gavin Newsom’s California Is Ignoring the Law on Illegal Alien Truck Drivers:
But, earlier in the conversation, Duffy argued that President Joe Biden’s high-migration policies wrecked incomes for U.S. truck drivers by allowing a flood of migrant drivers:
The country has been flooded with these kinds of [illegal-migrant] truck drivers. It has decimated a lot of our American — this is not why we’re doing it — but it truly has decimated the American truck driver, where it used to be a good living you could make.
Since April, Duffy has taken numerous steps to force thousands of illegal-migrant drivers off the road. His campaign will help professional American truckers raise productivity in the sector, which is now plagued by accidents, cheap labor, and surging thefts caused by Biden’s black-market trucking companies.
A tight labor market helps society because it allows young people to work themselves up to better jobs, and he said he saw that process working in a Wisconsin Walmart during Trump’s first term:
It took me forever to get through [a slow checkout lane]. I was going out to my car, and I was pissed. I’m like, ‘What the hell is this? What crappy service!’
Then, as I was loading my stuff up, I thought, you know what happened? Actually, the people who used to work at Walmart who were well trained, they’ve been pulled out of Walmart into a different [and better] job in Wausau, and this was a new group of [cashiers] who have come in because of new opportunity, because there were so many jobs available. There were so many [job] opportunities available that someone at Walmart [who] was making $13 or $14 an hour was now out making $20 [elsewhere] an hour because businesses needed more … good people to employ.
That’s what happens when people can rise up. You can start at Walmart, but there’s another great opportunity so you can step from Walmart into somewhere else, and then Walmart can bring in a new group of people and train them, and they can step up. You do want that upper mobility. And I think the Trump policies — I saw it in ’18 and ’19 — and I think you’re going to see that again as these are implemented, you help people elevate and step through the economic classes and improve their skills and their ability to get a good-paying job.
WATCH — Duffy: Trump Admin Focusing on Affordability to Make the American Dream a Reality Again:
The federal government should be able to help young people gain more at jobs, he said, adding:
If you’re 26 years old, and you look at the cost of a car, you look at the cost of housing, and you think, ‘My parents bought a house at 32 years old? When I’m 32 I can’t buy a house!’
That’s a huge problem in America. You want people to be able to afford the American dream, and so what are we doing on housing policy? I want people to buy safe homes — what can we do, though, to alleviate some of the pressure around the regulations that will allow us to build good, safe homes that someone can afford and start their American dream.
I want people to have kids … I think kids are great. Kids are a lot of fun. Kids will give you joy throughout your life, and maybe a little bit of pain too. … Kids are great, but if you can’t buy a house, how do you have family formation? How do you have kids?
“Some of the most joyful things in life can’t happen unless you can afford some of these basics,” he said.
Since January, Trump has blocked the arrival of illegal migrants through the Southern border and has begun deporting millions of illegal migrants who have inadvertently forced down Americans’ wages and also pushed up housing prices.
The cutoff of migrants has reversed the inflation of housing prices seen during Biden’s term. Instead, housing costs and rents are dropping. The Wall Street Journal recently reported:
Renters across much of the U.S. have enjoyed easing prices and months of free rent this year … as President Trump cracks down on international immigration, the influx of new foreign residents is also slowing.
Trump has also taken initial steps to curb companies’ use of white-collar visa workers amid furious resistance from universities, Fortune 500 companies, foreign-owned subcontractors, and myriad business-backed lobbies and think tanks.
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