Many charter members of our nation’s core of blow-dried and blathering commentators are blaming last week's blue tsunami in the midterm elections on a supposedly bad Trump economy. Voters are entitled to their frustrations over high prices. But the data continue to tell a very different story about the underlying strength of Trumpnomics.
Exhibit A: Friday's blowout October jobs report. Employers created 165,000 jobs against Wall Street's expectation of just 65,000—more than two and a half times the forecast. Unemployment fell from 4.2 percent to 4.1 percent even as labor-force participation climbed to 61.9 percent.
Private employers created 159,000 jobs. Revisions added another 84,000 to August and September. That is not a labor market rolling over. It is gaining momentum.
As the Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing, I am pleased to report that the star of this show was American manufacturing. Factories added 19,000 jobs in October and have gained 101,000 so far in 2026. Durable-goods producers added 25,000 jobs in October and 131,000 this year.
After 2025's painful retreat, manufacturing payrolls are finally 8,000 above their January 2025 level. This is the first net gain of Trump's second term—a meaningful turnaround, even if the rebuilding is far from finished.
Another election theme blames the Trump tariffs for inflation and the political defeat. But we learned prior to the energy price shock that tariffs don’t cause inflation—the foreigners who export to the U.S. pay for the tariffs by lowering their own prices.
As for September's headline inflation, it was 3.7 percent—uncomfortably high. Yet core inflation was 2.6 percent. A gasoline-price surge accounted for more than half the monthly headline increase.
This is an energy price shock fueled by the war, and blaming it on tariffs is politics masquerading as economics—RINO gaslighting and Democrat spin.
Here’s the Trump truth: The Trump tariffs are turning out to be among the most consequential economic policies of this administration. Paired with tax cuts and tough enforcement against foreign cheating, they have become the catalyst for America's strongest manufacturing renaissance since the post–World War II boom. The proof is in strong construction worker data and the factories we build, the rise in manufacturing jobs as new factories come on line, and a flood of brownfield facilities across the Rust Belt and beyond being upgraded and expanded.
Consider here that overall construction payrolls slipped 3,000 in October as residential work weakened. But nonresidential specialty-trade contractors—skilled workers essential to industrial projects—added 7,900 jobs. Their employment is nearly 120,000 higher than when Trump took office. Not every one of these jobs is on a factory site, but the growth reflects important capacity for building America's industrial base.
As for October's manufacturing gains, computer and electronic products added about 7,000 jobs. Machinery and primary metals each gained roughly 4,000. These are the factories making the components, equipment and materials on which American industrial power depends.
Here is where Trump policy comes together. Protective tariffs improve the economics of producing in America rather than importing. The Big Beautiful Bill's permanent 100 percent first-year expensing for eligible equipment improves the economics of building and equipping new plants. Tariffs encourage production here; the tax code rewards investment here.
The investment data reinforce the picture. Real private fixed investment grew at a 9.4 percent annualized pace in the third quarter. Equipment investment surged at a 21 percent pace. Core capital-goods orders rose 10.9 percent from a year earlier. The Institute for Supply Management's October manufacturing index reached 55.5, its tenth consecutive month of expansion. No single report proves which policy caused each new job. Together, these numbers describe an industrial economy investing, ordering and hiring.
The gains extend beyond factories. Professional and business services created 70,000 jobs. Average hourly earnings rose 0.4 percent in October. Manufacturing workers' weekly pay was up 5.1 percent from a year earlier. Americans still feel the pain of borrowing costs and inflation. But economic frustration should not be confused with economic contraction.
There is a remarkable historical parallel. In the 1982 midterms, President Ronald Reagan's Republicans lost 26 House seats amid stagflation and a recession. Unemployment that October was 10.4 percent. Inflation was at 5.1 percent. And the 30-year mortgage rate just after Election Day was 13.91 percent.
Compare that with today’s Trump economy: unemployment, 4.1 percent; September inflation, 3.7 percent; 30-year mortgage rate, 7.18 percent. Each measure is substantially better today.
That does not dismiss voters' complaints. It does put today's economy in a radically different league from Reagan's 1982 predicament.
And remember what followed. Two years after that midterm shellacking, Reagan carried 49 states and won 525 electoral votes. History guarantees no political rerun. It shows that one midterm verdict need not be the final verdict on an economic program.
In the meantime, the Trump administration will double and triple down on the economic policies that are working for American workers—and tariffs are at the top of the list.
