The latest inflation and GDP numbers from the Trump administration are bogus. Trump’s cherrypicking data and using inappropriate data make the GDP and inflation numbers look good, when they’re actually indicators of a poor economy, especially when compared to other nations that are booming and doing so without inflation (e.g. China).
Before we look at Trump’s phoney statistics, let’s look at what GDP really means. Prof. Dr. Joseph Stiglitz, Ph.D, a Nobel Laureate in Economics, has called for replacing gross domestic product with real metrics of well-being and sustainability. As RFK Sr. said, “Gross national product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.” “It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. … Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. … It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” Further, as Dr. Stiglitz teaches us, “It [GDP] does not even measure crucial aspects of the economy such as its sustainability: whether or not it is headed for a crash.”
For example, the current GDP figures for the USA reflect increased spending on our military and increased exports of weapons to other countries. Does this weaponization of the world benefit society. No. But it does greatly benefit the rich man. Reflecting militarization, the world is in chaos, from the Middle East, to Europe, to South America. It includes North America too, because US arms manufacturers export weapons to the cartel in Mexico so that the cartel can bring drugs into the USA. Most illicit drugs coming into the USA arrive across this border and are carried-in by US citizens. The cartel and fellow rich men orchestrate this billion dollar illicit trade. And Trump supports it. Recently Trump pardoned one of the biggest cartel members on the planet, along with a number of other drug lords (Trump pardons or commutes the sentences of many fellow fraudster friends). Trump has also issued pardons or commuted sentences for other individuals convicted of serious federal drug crimes, including high-level figures like Larry Hoover (founder of the Gangster Disciples street gang) and Ross Ulbricht (creator of the dark web marketplace Silk Road). And where does all that drug money go? A big chunk of it is laundered in Miami, FL. Drug runners buy huge condos and homes on the ocean in the Miami area. The land of Trump, Palm Beach, is part of the cartel’s operations too. And guess what, this increases the GDP. And US banks are big winners in hauling in drug money – often times, knowlingly.
All of this illicit activity adds to the GDP too. Exporting guns to the cartel – big business. Jailing captured drug-runners in private-enterprise prisons – big business. Putting the drug-addicted into hospitals and treatments centers – big business. Building a wall that doesn’t stop drug runners – big business. Adding more military and ICE to the borders – big business. and guess who pays for all this – you do, the middle class. It’s the “T-shaped” economy where the rich become richer and the middle class becomes poorer.
The Fake Economic Numbers
On Dec. 18, 2025, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that inflation had fallen to an annual rate of 2.7% in November, down from 3% in September and well below the 3.1% consensus of economists. Soon thereafter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that real gross domestic product had shot up by a surprising 4.3% annual rate in the third quarter of 2025 ended Sept. 30.
As part of the fakery, the Trump administration and its Republican acolytes seized on the figures to boast about Trump’s economic policies. White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett proclaimed the inflation figure to be “an absolute blockbuster report.” He described the GDP figure as “a great Christmas present for the American people.”
“America is winning again,” crowed House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) after the GDP report. Mikey, Trump’s puppet in the House, called the report “the direct result of congressional Republicans and President Trump delivering policies that drive growth and expand opportunity for American families and workers.”
However, the economists, such as Prof. Dr. Justin Wolfers, Ph.D. at the Univ of Michigan, whose jobs involve scrutinizing those statistics to glean what they really mean don’t view them as evidence for the success of Trumponomics. Quite the contrary. Many see them as artifacts of the long government shutdown, which halted the collection of data that go into those reports, being purposely used to severely distort the ecosnome data. Furthermore, economic experts expect the flaws (and their use for deceit) in those reports to persist well into 2026, undermining their usefulness as true economic indicators.
“You’ve got to take it with a grain of salt,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG US, of the inflation report. “It’s confusing and it doesn’t quite square with prices that we’ve observed.” An examination of the GDP figures also underscores the narrow basis driving economic growth in Trump’s regime — it’s essentially the product of robust spending by wealthy consumers, government spending on military, and massive corporate investments in flawed AI technology. For middle- and lower-income Americans, the economic present and future don’t look anywhere as positive as the numbers would suggest.
People feel it, consumer confidence has been sinking for months, according to the Conference Board. That points to an enduring question about the U.S. economy: Whose economy is it? Who’s benefitting?
More than ever, it belongs to the rich, producing a “T-shaped” economy, which has been playing out in shopping patterns this holiday season. The “T” represents the economy rising for the wealthy and crashing for the rest of us.
According to Bank of America analysts, since this spring, spending by the highest-earning third of Americans has been soaring, while that of middle- and lower-income households has stagnated. In part that’s because the stock market has remained vibrant and all that paper money the wealthy have accumulated as a result. But soaring stock markets often precede a big crash. For the rich, it doesn’t matter. They make money when the market goes up, or goes down. It’s the middle class who is eviscerated when the market crashes.
Since the top 20% of households as measured by income own about 87% of directly-held equities, stock market gains tend to disproportionately benefit the higher-income cohort. By contrast, “almost 30% of lower-income households appear to be living ‘paycheck to paycheck.’”
The highest-earning 10% of households now account for nearly half of all consumer spending, according to Moody’s Analytics. That’s the highest level since the data began to be collected in the 1980s, when the filhty rich already accounted for about one-third of spending.
Job growth has likely turned negative, despite the published employment figures not yet showing it, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell acknowledged during a Dec. 10 news conference following the Fed’s decision to lower interest rates by 0.25 percentage points.
Reflecting bogus data, non-farm payroll gains have averaged about 40,000 a month since April, Chairman Powell observed. “We think there’s an overstatement in these numbers by about 60,000,” he said. “So that would be negative 20,000 per month.”
Flaws in the Latest Statistics
The government shutdown, lasting 43 days from Oct. 1 to Nov. 12, was the most important cause of gaps in the collected data for the consumer price index calculation. As Swonk noted in a social media post, cutbacks at the BLS had already reduced the staff assigned to sampling prices by 25%. That prompted the agency to substitute “imputed” numbers for hard data.
“Those cases can show up as zeros in the percent change of the release,” Swonk wrote — obviously lowering the bottom-line figure. A sampling scheduled for mid-October had to be canceled, so data from August were used instead — concealing any price increases in subsequent months.
A major problem concerns housing costs that account for about one-third of the data inputs for the CPI. Because the BLS was unable to collect rental data for October, it implied that the monthly change in rents was 0% in October — further skewing the reported CPI lower. Economists say it will take at least six months to use newly collected data to provide a reliable estimate of housing inflation.
The delay in sampling means that some seasonal price phenomena were missed. Economists point specifically to airfares as an example — the originally scheduled sampling would have incorporated a pre-Thanksgiving run-up in fares, but by the time the data were collected fares had returned to a non-holiday level. An artificially reduced inflation rate will translate into a higher, artifical reported rate of GDP growth. Cook one book (inflation) to your beenfit, and the other book (GDP) is cooked in your favor too. Trump and his fellow conny’s ate good at few things, and this is fakery is one of them.
All this Trumpian fakery might have a limited economic impact — corporations, banks, businesses, and academic economists generally have sources other than the government to reach their conclusions — if not for the partisan political exploitation of the numbers.
Economists have warned that some economic factors haven’t yet been felt. The factors include Trump’s tariffs that in their execution have been lower than they appeared on the surface, and higher healthcare premiums, which have been forecast or announced but won’t actually become effective until 2026.
If the job market continues to weaken, that will show up more vividly in 2026. And with AI companies primarily making money by selling to one another and financing one another, in what is described as “circular sales and financing,” AI could crash in 2026 and send the economy into a 2010-style crash. But don’t worry, when the crash occurs, the rich will become richer and their Trumpian money will “trickle-down” like a warm, yellow flow in a cheap Russian brothel. It’s the continuation of Republican economics that ravage the US economy and diminish the middle class while making the rich even richer. Meanwhile, Epstein’s co-conspirators (at least 10 billionaires, according to Rep. Massie) continue their dastardly deeds and continue to help to make Trump’s fake GDP numbers look good.
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