Throughout a Tuesday evening, December 23 look on Sean Hannity’s Fox Information present, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick claimed that the U.S. economic system is booming throughout Donald Trump’s second presidency.
Lutnick bragged, “That is the golden age coming.” However his claims come at a time when Trump’s approval scores on the economic system are plummeting in ballot after ballot.
The commerce secretary is an aggressive promoter of Trump’s most controversial insurance policies, from his steep new tariffs to his help of synthetic intelligence (AI) know-how — which, many economists are warning, may put numerous Individuals out of labor.
In an article revealed on Christmas Eve Day 2025, New York Instances reporters Tony Romm and Colby Smith stress that the Trump Administration is shifting full pace forward together with his insurance policies regardless of warnings from economists and skeptics.
“For Mr. Trump, there isn’t a danger, solely reward, posed by the dawning and disruptive new age of computing,” Romm and Smith report. “Over the previous yr, the president and his high aides have totally embraced AI, and showered its main company backers with cash and regulatory help, because the administration appears to supercharge one of many main areas of development in an in any other case precarious U.S. economic system. That optimism was on show on Tuesday, (December 23), after the federal authorities reported that the U.S. economic system grew at an annual fee of greater than 4 p.c final quarter.”
The Instances reporters add, “Kevin Hassett, the director of the White Home Nationwide Financial Council, advised CNBC that the brand new information indicated that the president’s broader agenda was working as he touted the indicators of a ‘increase’ in AI.”
Romm and Smith notice that the Trump Administration’s “unqualified help” for AI ” contrasts starkly with the extra cautious tone struck by economists and even some technologists in Silicon Valley.”
“Many nonetheless query whether or not AI may trigger vital job losses, a minimum of quickly, and fret over the pace and strategies which have allowed the business to develop in ways in which might not be sustainable and will danger monetary havoc,” the Instances journalists clarify. “The White Home has largely waved off lots of these considerations. As an alternative, Mr. Trump, who has lengthy seen the inventory market as a barometer of his financial success, has courted and celebrated the hovering inventory costs of main know-how corporations like Nvidia….. For now, financial information displays no mass firings due to AI. However a rising physique of analysis nonetheless hints on the methods the know-how could reshape the labor drive, notably for youthful Individuals, together with latest faculty graduates.”
Darrell M. West, a senior fellow on the Brookings Establishment, is warning that if tech corporations banking on AI run right into a “main disaster” sooner or later, a bailout from the federal authorities is a robust chance — not in contrast to the financial institution bailouts of the Nice Recession.
West advised the Instances, “AI is simply too massive to fail, so it is actually essential that authorities study the teachings of previous bubbles. We do not know if we’re in a bubble, as a result of nobody ever is aware of till it’s too late, however there are actually many warning indicators on the market.”
Learn Tony Romm and Colby Smith’s full New York Instances article at this hyperlink (subscription required).
