| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, whether we see any fallout from that. | |
| But certainly I think those trade deals are going to be sort of front and center this week. | ||
| And I think we'll be keeping an eye on whether the president announces any travel around the country to sort of tout that one big beautiful bill that he signed into law on Friday, sort of the key signature piece of legislation for President Trump and Republicans. | ||
| Obviously, Democrats will be going on the attack over that, but we'll see if the White House announces any travel this week for the president to kind of hit the road and try to sell a bill that polling has shown the public is already kind of skeptical of. | ||
| You can see our guest work at thehill.com, Brett Samuels, who reports from the White House for the Hill. | ||
| Thanks for your time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You bet. | |
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| This is from the Wall Street Journal, a piece that came out recently taking a look at what people think about the economy under this president. | ||
| It says voters now agree it's President Trump's economy. | ||
| Trump voters are now likelier to say that he is more responsible for the current state of the economy than to say that former President Joe Biden, by a margin of 46 to 34 percent, according to YouGov survey data gathered for the Wall Street Journal, that was between June 17th and the 20th. | ||
| Also, it says that President Trump's supporters had been likelier to pick President Biden before last month. | ||
| People who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris have overwhelmingly said that President Trump was more responsible for the economy since YouGov put the question to Americans in March. | ||
| This adding that there's no scientific answer for who owns the economy, but the question serves as a sort of Rorschach test with voters answering based on a mix of political affiliations, media diets, personal finance, personal finances and traditional economic indicators. | ||
| This story also adding when it comes to what people responded to, saying that more Americans say that it's the president's economy in part simply because of the passage of time. | ||
| But his raft of new policies, including a slew of tariffs whose magnitude and targets have changed often, have also prompted many voters to assign credit or blame to him. | ||
| Some 84% of the president's voters approved of his handling of jobs in the economy in a YouGov poll from late June. | ||
| Nearly 9 in 10 for those who voted for Vice President Harris disapproved. | ||
| And this adding that those who are the president's supporters saying the economy is heading in the right direction, but saying this about tariffs, saying in particular, I have weighed on consumers' outlooks amongst both parties. | ||
| That's from the Wall Street Journal this morning. | ||
| This comes in light of recent news about the job numbers. | ||
| You may have remembered going into the holiday weekend, seeing information about that, saying that CBS and others saying that employers across the United States adding 147,000 jobs in June, with the labor market remaining resilient despite slowing economic growth this year. | ||
| That figure is in line with the average monthly gain of 146,000 over the last year, according to the Labor Department. | ||
| From CBS saying that job growth was stronger than expected in June, payrolls gain sailed past $115,000, predicted by economists polled by the Financial Derm FECSEC. | ||
| And this adding that the nation's unemployment rate fell down to 4.1%, that from 4.2% in May, the lowest since February. | ||
| And there's the details from the job map. | ||
| So if you want to take in those job numbers into consideration, if you want to take in other factors when it comes to the economy under the current president, President Trump, and you want to give us your thoughts on it, again, for Democrats, it's 202-748-8000. | ||
| For Republicans, it's 202-748-8001. | ||
| And you can also reach us on our Independent line, too, 202-748-8002. | ||
| What's your opinion of the current economy under President Trump? | ||
| Let's start with Faye. | ||
| Faye's in Ohio, Democrats line. | ||
| Faye, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| We must not forget about the elderly, the poor, the imprisoned. | ||
| And this economy has forgotten them with these big, ugly bill. | ||
| And after the midterm elections, many people, 17 million it's estimated, will be without health care. | ||
| Food stamps will be gone for those 12 and under for in many, many circumstances. | ||
| And the numbers you just quoted, you know, you forget that under President Biden, we had the it was on the cover of the economics that we were the envy of the world in terms of our economy and job growth. | ||
| And by comparison with this administration, with this evil administration, you cite job gains that don't mirror what we had under a much more benevolent regime. | ||
| So those are my inputs that I don't want to normalize the evilness of this administration, and you can't separate that from where the economy is because we're all in this together. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Fay Ver in Ohio, giving her thoughts. | ||
| This is John in North Carolina, Republican Line. | ||
| Your thoughts on the economy under President Trump. | ||
| John, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, yeah, good morning. | |
| So I think the economy is doing well, but I think it's about to get even better. | ||
| I think the tax cuts are really going to stimulate the economy. | ||
| I think it's going to generate investment, and I think it's going to grow and expand. | ||
| And no disrespect to Faye. | ||
| I'm sure she's a lovely person. | ||
| But personally, I don't think it helps the political discourse to call people evil. | ||
| If you want to disagree with someone's economic policies or you want to disagree with someone's political policies, have an argument that you can fake that's based on facts, not based on feelings, not based on emotions, but an argument that you can say that's based on facts so that you can debate the points. | ||
| Simply labeling someone evil is unhelpful. | ||
| And I'd like to see us return to the days in America where you could disagree with someone without being disagreeable, and you didn't have to call them names in order to make your point. | ||
| So John, one of the points she did make is that perhaps there was some carryover from the Biden administration leading up to the current state of the economy. | ||
| What do you think of that argument? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So when I'll tell you, in my personal opinion, when President Biden left office, gas prices were over $3 a gallon. | |
| In North Carolina, they're $2.50 a gallon. | ||
| Now, you're an adult. | ||
| You've been around a long time. | ||
| You know as well as I do that oil prices and gas prices filter through the economy. | ||
| And when they're high, it drives up inflation. | ||
| When they're low, it stimulates growth. | ||
| In addition to that, economically, it's great. | ||
| But politically, it's also advantageous in this sense. | ||
| When gas prices and oil prices, particularly oil prices, are below $50 a barrel, regimes that are problematic or create mischief for America, they don't have the economic resources in order to make that mischief. | ||
| And so if we want to see the economy in America continue to expand, keep oil prices below $50, $60 a barrel consistently, allow government to get off the backs, deregulate the economy, and empower Americans to grow this economy. | ||
| And we will continue to be the envy of the world, as Fay said, because I believe economic growth in America is better than anyplace else in the world. | ||
| And if you look at all the investment deals that President Trump has racked up in the first six months of his administration, that's unprecedented. | ||
| If only half of those investment deals actually bear fruit, you're going to have a manufacturing boom in this country like we haven't seen probably since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| John there in North Carolina giving his thoughts. | ||
| The Center for American Progress in an analysis in January of this year, taking a look at the economy under President Biden. | ||
| One of the things they highlighted was that economic growth surpassed expectations, saying the path of economic growth in 2024 again defied that, those expectations in both 2023 and 24. | ||
| Real gross domestic product, the typical measure for the total value of the economy accounting for inflation, exceeded major public and private forecasts. | ||
| It has an analysis chart there. | ||
| If you're interested in reading some of those points and the points they make at the Center for American Progress, you can do that at their website at AmericanProgress.org. | ||
| What do you think of the economy? | ||
| What's your opinion of the economy under President Trump? | ||
| If you want to factor in things like gross domective product or as John talked about, gas prices or as Faye talked about, impacts on people. | ||
| Again, 202748-8,000 for Democrats, 202-748-8,001 for Republicans and Independents. | ||
| 202748-8,0002. | ||
| Let's go to Ron. | ||
| Ron in Illinois, Democrats line. | ||
| Ron in Illinois. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| They're talking about the economy. | ||
| You've got to be worried about the deficit. | ||
| They claim that the deficit's going to go up 3.2 to 3.5%. | ||
| I don't know why they would raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion if it's only going to go up 3.2 or something. | ||
| But anyway, if you just take 4% of the $4 trillion, if it goes up, that's actually for every working person in the country, it's over $25,000. | ||
| And you could do the exact same, and the money don't just all of a sudden show up. | ||
| It has to be borrowed from different countries or wherever China. | ||
| But anyway, you could do the same thing. | ||
| Just get four credit cards, borrow $25,000 on them, take that money, give it to the richest person in your city or the richest person in your state, and then that leaves you with the pay-to-bill. | ||
| And that's what's going to go on. | ||
| That's only with $4,000. | ||
| The total bill deficit is going to end up being $40 trillion when it's all done. | ||
| That's ridiculous. | ||
| And somebody has to pay it back, either your kids or their kids. | ||
| The economy is going to go downhill from the bank. | ||
| So that's the future. | ||
| What do you think of the current state of the economy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It might be okay. | |
| The guy was talking about the price of gas. | ||
| When Trump came into office, I wrote down the price of gas. | ||
| I was paying $2.99. | ||
| It's now $335 or $39. | ||
| It hasn't gone down. | ||
| I don't see anything going down. | ||
| Everything is, you go to the stores, it's ridiculous. | ||
| So I don't see how the economy is going to get better. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No matter what anybody says. | |
| Now, for the ultra-rich, the economy's great. | ||
| For the working class people, it's terrible. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Ron there in Illinois giving his assessment. | ||
| We will hear an assessment from Dan as well. | ||
| He's in Kentucky, Republican line. | ||
| Hi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Taking my call. | |
| John stole my thunder a while ago. | ||
| I'll tell you, he's spot on on everything he's talking about. | ||
| I think the economy's doing fine. | ||
| I think it's good that we finally got Trump in there to get things done. | ||
| You know, I mean, he could speak to the media. | ||
| You know, one like Joe, you know, trying to stay away from the media, but I think he's doing a good job. | ||
| And he got a lot of things accomplished so far. | ||
| I think he's just people and keeping on. | ||
| And, you know, for the Democrats always saying gloom and doom, you know, if everybody just get together and work together like they should, and not just the White House and Congress and, you know, the whole all three agencies work together, the country will do good. | ||
| And just trust in God, God take care of everything, especially like the climate. | ||
| Well, Dan, Dan, let me ask you back to the economy. | ||
| When you say it's fine, what do you look at? | ||
| What indicators do you look at when you say it's fine? | ||
| What are you gauging that by? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, gas prices, grocery prices, you know. | |
| Okay. | ||
| All right. | ||
| The Washington Post takes a look at the president, his economy. | ||
| This is the headline. | ||
| Trump's economy remains pretty strong, but some warning signs are flashing, according to the assessment from the Washington Post, which includes stock markets have rallied. | ||
| The inflation rate is steady. | ||
| Unemployment remains low, ticking down to 4.1% in June. | ||
| The president's one big beautiful bill promises to extend massive tax cuts and benefit corporations and wealthy Americans, provisions that could boost part of the economy, saying that still many analysts say that the future of the U.S. economy under the president remains uncertain. | ||
| Gross domestic product shrank in the first quarter of the year, in part because of surging imports, and consumers are feeling hesitant and spending less. | ||
| It's also too soon to know the full effect of the president's widespread tariffs, especially with the deadline approaching to get deals completed with many countries before levies rise once more. | ||
| And as immigrants leave the workforce either voluntarily or by deportation, a lack of workers could create labor shortages in certain key areas and fuel wage inflation. | ||
| That's from the Post. | ||
| One of the things to watch out for today, by the way, is expected by the White House extending letters to certain member countries on the issue of trade deals in an effort to speed up those deals with the possibility of new tariffs being put against them. | ||
| Look for that to play out today in Washington. | ||
| You can comment and if you want to roll in tariffs as part of your factor, or at least your consideration of the current state of the economy, you're welcome to do so. | ||
| Joe's in Baltimore, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I think we have what's called an advanced economy. | ||
| And as far as I can tell, that basically means that what we have is going to be expensive no matter what in a certain sense. | ||
| Everything costs more to do here in America because there's kind of like an imbalance of investment going on in the world, an imbalance of wealth concentrations. | ||
| So money kind of just doesn't go as far here just as a natural state. | ||
| And so, you know, it's always going to be kind of a struggle for us to match up with other countries no matter what. | ||
| And that's what a lot of these tariffs are about, whether you agree or disagree with it and think that the implementation is a good way to go. | ||
| But America, it seems, you know, the only way for us to keep going on this, I think, is really successful implementation of automation. | ||
| It's the only way that we're going to be able to compete with places like China and Vietnam who have cheap labor. | ||
| We can't do it here. | ||
| If we want to be self-sufficient, we have to find these technological workarounds. | ||
| And then where does that put us economically in terms of Who has the ability to make all of these things and to perform labor in the economy with a bunch of machines, especially increasingly the hope they would keep working more and more automatically? | ||
| What are we going to do to ensure that people have jobs that are worthwhile into the future? | ||
| How do we get people, people need to work right now? | ||
| What happens if you don't need people to work? | ||
| That's kind of point one. | ||
| Point two is the tax cuts and their impact on the economy. | ||
| With the Trump tax cuts, we've seen the last couple times that they've implemented it. | ||
| The first time they last for a couple years while tax cuts for the wealthy were permanent. | ||
| And now they're coming back again and saying, hey, oh no, watch out, panic. | ||
| These are going to go away if we don't extend the tax cuts. | ||
| They keep saying make them permanent this time. | ||
| Are the parts of the Trump tax cuts for the poorer folks actually permanent this time? | ||
| Because it seems like a ratchet where, oh no, it's going to expire. | ||
| We have to get back what we had by promising even more to the rich where their tax cuts were permanent. | ||
| And very quickly, point three. | ||
| Sounds like the Trump accounts for children. | ||
| That sounds nice. | ||
| Anyway, that's my thoughts on the economy. | ||
| So from North Carolina, there are some of you posting on Facebook. | ||
| Larry Odom from Facebook saying night and day as compared to the runaway inflation during former President Biden. | ||
| Nina Blackwell adding her thoughts, the economy is teetering on the edge of destruction, recession by the end of the year, she predicts. | ||
| And then Bob Glenn from Facebook saying everything seems to be falling into place. | ||
| Groceries and gas prices are down. | ||
| Stock market is back to record highs again. | ||
| Hopefully utility prices will start falling soon. | ||
| Tariffs are being negotiated in our favor. | ||
| Seems the Liberal Democrats warning that if the president got reelected, the country will crash and burn is very wrong. | ||
| The only thing that crashed and burned was the Democratic Party. | ||
| Again, that's just some of the assessments there from Facebook. | ||
| You can make your thoughts there. | ||
| You can also post on X. You can text us too, 202-748-8003 about your opinion of the economy. | ||
| And as always, choose the line that best represents you. | ||
| If you've called in the last 30 days, hold off from doing so. | ||
| And then if you would, make sure your television is turned down. | ||
| Let's go to Robert. | ||
| Robert in North Carolina, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hi. | |
| I am an independent, but I voted for Donald Trump. | ||
| And I want to give my opinion on the economy. | ||
| But first, please allow me just a moment to give praise to my great president, who is Donald Trump, that I voted for. | ||
| I feel that God is with him. | ||
| I pray for him every single day. | ||
| I put him up there with Martin Luther King. | ||
| As a black American male, I put him up there with my heroes, like Michael Jordan and people. | ||
| I think he should be put on that mountain that's got the older president. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| You get nervous. | ||
| Well, your comments on the economy, please, and the president's your opinion of the economy under the president. | ||
| What are those? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I feel that the economy is coming along pretty good. | ||
| It's getting better. | ||
| Give the man time. | ||
| He works every day, works very hard, his administration. | ||
| I have, under Joe Biden, I could barely pay my bills or do anything. | ||
| Things were very horrible. | ||
| I think things are getting much better. | ||
| Gas prices are better. | ||
| I'm not an economist, but as just an everyday working person, I'm able to pay my bills. | ||
| Yes, it's tough. | ||
| We are not in a communist country. | ||
| We are not a commune, so everybody don't get things equally. | ||
| People should try to work hard. | ||
| And one thing I want to see is: if there's so much going to be cuts in these like Social Security, there's going to be cuts in Medicare. | ||
| Why don't I have people calling in to CNN, giving their own personal example? | ||
| Oh, they just cut my Social Security. | ||
| Oh, I just lost my help with food stamps and I can't feed my children. | ||
| No, it's a whole bunch of Democrat politicians that are putting out a lot of fear and scare tactics, which is evil, and they're going to continue to lose votes, especially black votes. | ||
| Okay, that's Robert there in North Carolina. | ||
| I'm one of the many calling C-SPAN to express those opinions on the lines there. | ||
| Every morning we give you the opportunity to express your views on a variety of things. | ||
| The economy is one of those things today, the president's impact on the economy there. | ||
| He spoke about that after the signing of the One Big Beautiful bill heading to Iowa to make comments there. | ||
| This is what he had to say about the economy at that time. | ||
| You got the hottest, smartest, sharpest country. | ||
| And by the way, look at our stock market. | ||
| We're taking in hundreds of billions of dollars on tariffs with no inflation. | ||
| And today we just set another record, the highest stock market in history. | ||
| No inflation. | ||
| And one of the great economists from the Wharton School of Finance, where I happened to go, he apologized. | ||
| He says, you know, I think Trump outsmarted us all. | ||
| And yesterday was the poll. | ||
| And out of 77 economists, I came in second. | ||
| I want to find the guy that came in first. | ||
| Somebody came in first. | ||
| Can you believe it? | ||
| But we said what was going to happen and it's happening. | ||
| And I'll tell you what, we had the greatest economy in the history of my first term. | ||
| This is going to blow it away. | ||
| You watch. | ||
| This is going to blow it away. | ||
| For the first time in years, this 4th of July, the economy is roaring, incomes are soaring, wages are up, prices are down. | ||
| Gasoline, you see what's going on with gasoline, it's way down. | ||
| See what's going on with eggs? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Eggs are way down, eggs. | |
| That's the president from over the weekend. | ||
| You may share his view of the economy under his administration. | ||
| You may disagree with that. | ||
| Let's go to Charles. | ||
| Charles in Virginia, Republican line. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| You're on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Thanks for the opportunity. | ||
| Certainly this morning I heard a lot of emotional responses. | ||
| Nothing really to facts. | ||
| So I appreciate you jumping in a few times to quote some facts there. | ||
| So from my perspective, as I look at consumer confidence in June being down about 5.5%, and the constant theme throughout the start of this administration has been uncertainty, both which impacts business investment and also consumer confidence. | ||
| Certainly, we're not on a good trajectory. | ||
| Now, how that shakes out in the end, but certainly consumer confidence rooted in student debt, the students having to pay that uncertainty in default, and things kind of just centered around how people will feel about spending their money in the future. | ||
| We're definitely not in a good place, and Trump is unfortunately adding to that uncertainty, which would have me say the economy is not in a good state. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| That's Charles there in Virginia. | ||
| When it comes to those gas prices, by the way, what you heard the president talk about, the Business Insider, was on their website saying it was over the weekend that the OPEC plus nations jolted markets by announcing it would flood the market with even more oil. | ||
| Late producers, including heavyweight Saudi Arabia and Russia, plan to ramp up output by 548,000 barrels a day in August, handily beating the 411,000 barrel increase analysts were expecting. | ||
| It says that gasoline averaged $3.16 a gallon in the U.S. on June the 30th, down 11% from the same time last year. | ||
| According to the Energy Information Administration, about half the cost of a gallon of gas comes from crude oil. | ||
| Let's go to Denise. | ||
| Denise in Kentucky, Democrats line, your opinion of the economy under President Trump. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| I think it's clear we can already see the changes. | ||
| Grocery prices just went up 5 to 6%. | ||
| Our home insurance just went up. | ||
| Our car insurance just went up. | ||
| Everything we look at is going up. | ||
| Now, tariffs has got a big deal to do with that. | ||
| And I feel this: that we have to change who's running things. | ||
| And Hal Rogers is running for office here in Kentucky. | ||
| So I'll be voting for Ned Pillsdorf. | ||
| And I'd like to thank you for giving us the time. | ||
| Can I ask? | ||
| You talked about a certain increase in prices. | ||
| You related that to tariffs. | ||
| How do you compare those two? | ||
| Why do you think those are equal in your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the thing about it is, right now, I talked to a grocery. | |
| A grocery says they're having to adjust their prices because they don't know really what's going to go on with tariffs. | ||
| So some of them has already assumed that tariffs is going to take place. | ||
| So they've risen them. | ||
| You know, as you say, you can always rise it. | ||
| You can come down. | ||
| But this is the problem. | ||
| We're paying a percentage higher right now. | ||
| Probably, if it were to come down, you know, it may help. | ||
| But I don't see it coming down because power companies already notified they're wanting to raise the power for 13%. | ||
| So people, I don't see, I don't see, and the legal aid, they're going to cut the legal aid out and all, and especially NOAA. | ||
| When you get flooded and people don't understand, when you get flooded, it's pitiful. | ||
| Okay, Denise there. | ||
| She references tariff, those trade deals facing a deadline. | ||
| This is from the Wall Street Journal's headline section this morning saying that the president faces that crucial week for reaching trade deals before new tariffs are scheduled to hit dozens of countries starting on Wednesday. | ||
| He says that the president will attempt to build his momentum by tackling a series of trade agreements that have already proved elusive ahead of his rapidly approaching deadline. | ||
| Among the sticking points, the president has refused to budge on his industry-specific tariffs, including those targeting foreign automobile manufacturers. | ||
| Let's hear from Cal. | ||
| Cal is in Maryland Independent Line. | ||
| Go ahead, Cal. | ||
| You're on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Pedro. | |
| I live here in downtown Silver Spring working here in Washington, D.C. | ||
| And one of the things that I'm truly concerned about, especially with this big, beautiful bill, is that there will be undoubtedly increases to working families such as myself when it comes to rent, insurance, car payments, groceries. | ||
| And I think current politicians, especially the majority in the Republic, they're not thinking of the working professionals as they're making these bills. | ||
| Yes, there are things that they have claimed that we need to work on fraud. | ||
| I completely agree with them. | ||
| Let's work on those issues. | ||
| But to be able to just, with a big brush, Cancel health insurance and all of these other things for many different people. | ||
| It's going to be a recession, especially with all these deportations that they're doing without due process. | ||
| There will be shortages of staff in different industries, and that will result in higher wages and higher cost and lower wages. | ||
| And I think it's just going to be a nightmare over the next six months to a year and a half until midterms next year. |