Scott Bessent Says Construction Jobs Are Booming Under Trump's Tariffs. Government Data Show the Opposite. |
Free Trade
Eric Boehm | 1.29.2026 10:50 AM
The Trump administration can't seem to tell the truth about the state of the economy—even in contexts when the news is politically beneficial.
Often, that seems to be happening because the White House still can't confront the obvious truth about President Donald Trump's tariffs.
Take two recent examples. The first occurred on Sunday, when ABC News' Jonathan Karl confronted Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent with some inconvenient facts. Karl pointed out that the number of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. has declined every single month since last April, when Trump announced his "Liberation Day" tariffs, which were supposedly going to benefit American manufacturers.
Bessent pivoted away to talk about a different sector of the economy. "What we're seeing is a burst in construction jobs, because we're seeing [a] record number of factories [under] construction," Bessent claimed, before offering some anecdotes about new factories being built in South Carolina.
But there are plenty of anecdotes that........