White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller defended President Trump’s response to questions about a possible recession over the weekend and said it wasn’t the president’s job to forecast economic conditions.
“His comments are exactly right. It’s not our job to make these kinds of prognostications. It’s our job under President Trump’s leadership to fix the economy, to stop four years of bleeding,” Miller said during a Monday appearance on NewsNation’s “The Hill.”
The president addressed concerns about a potential recession Sunday.
“I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing,” Trump said when asked about a possible upcoming recession.
“And there are always periods of — it takes a little time. It takes a little time. But I think it should be great for us. I mean, I think it should be great,” he added.
Those comments seemed to rattle financial markets Monday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing down 890 points, or 2.1 percent.
Miller cited the February jobs report as a sign of economic progress under the Trump administration. The United States added 151,000 jobs in February in a range of industries including health care, transportation and warehousing.
“I think the most important point is that we’re already seeing the economic benefits of this change in policy. The last jobs report, the first of the Trump administration, showed a quarter of a million job gains for American citizens,” Miller told anchor Blake Burman.
“For the first time in recent memory, all job growth was the private sector, only the government sector lost jobs because, of course, we’re downsizing government, which is, again, what is driving inflation, is the growth in federal spending,” he added.
Miller also claimed the “new jobs” went to only Americans, while “foreign workers lost jobs,” which he said is a sign that the Trump administration’s immigration policies are working.
Trump is working with “border czar” Tom Homan to fulfill his campaign promise of mass deportations while curbing the rate of illegal immigration. He has also introduced a host of tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, the United States’s largest trade partners, to increase the price of imports and, in turn, bolster American manufacturing.
Miller said the president is fixing the country’s crises “one by one.”
”We have an unsustainable defense commitment around the world that is bleeding our defense budget dry,” he told Burman.
“We have critical manufacturing and supply chains like chips and semiconductors that are housed almost entirely in foreign countries. Other countries could shut the lights off on America unless we bring these critical supply chains home, not to mention rare earth minerals, in which we are again dependent on foreign countries for essential minerals that we need to power this nation.”
