The Trump economy may be stronger than it looks. And poised to grow even more robust in the coming months.

The U.S. economy, like all things, has become increasingly partisan in recent years.

Even interpreting economic terms, redefining words like “recession”, can be employed to help some political candidates over others — as we saw during the Biden administration.

There were no lengths major media outlets wouldn’t go to explain away, excuse, or deflect blame from the economic issues Americans faced from 2021 onward.

Crushing gas prices, runaway inflation, soaring housing costs; It was transitory. It was “Putin’s Price Hike.”

“Historically” it wasn’t that bad really, other eras had it worse. “Globally” it wasn’t that bad, either — not as punishing as the inflation some countries were grappling with in those days.

The economy was in trouble — so much trouble, that Democrats lost elections right, left, and center in 2024. But who could tell from the media coverage?

Of course, glowingly positive news framing couldn’t convince most Americans that they weren’t as poor as they felt.

And now that Trump is president, the opposite is true. 

The economy is growing healthier, month by month. High gas prices are back, but inflation has been trending toward taming nonetheless. Wether that trend will continue depends on how much longer the Strait of Hormuz remains closed.

But if the economy is doing well, it’s hard to tell from the media coverage.

Trump can’t win with most mainstream media outlets. He is pilloried for hiring “loyalists” to cabinet posts — which every president ever has done. Trump arguably has more Democrats in his administration (JFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard spring to mind) than recent Democratic Party administrations have hired Republicans, that’s for sure.

Then Trump fires Pam Bondi and is pilloried for…not being loyal.

So the easiest mistake to make in Trump-era economics is to confuse elite disapproval with economic weakness. Many commentators have been so certain that tariffs, political disruption, and sheer Trumpian chaos must produce a visibly failing economy that they have sometimes mistaken their theory for reality. But if the question is what the economy actually looks like right now, the answer is more stubborn than the critics expected. 

In March, the U.S. added 178,000 jobs, unemployment was 4.3 percent, and manufacturing, construction, leisure and hospitality, and transportation all posted impressive gains. That is not a picture of an economy rolling over. It is a picture of an economy finding its footing and, in some important places, pushing forward.

Nor is this just a one-month story. Yes, growth slowed sharply in the fourth quarter of 2025, with real GDP rising at a 0.7 percent annual rate. But that softer finish came after back-to-back quarters of 3.8 percent and 4.4 percent growth in the second and third quarters. For the full year, real GDP still grew 2.1 percent. Even in the weaker fourth quarter, consumer spending and investment were still positive contributors, and real final sales to private domestic purchasers rose 1.9 percent. 

That is not a booming economy, but it is also not a failing one. It is an economy that took some hits and kept moving.

Just as important, inflation has not done what the doomsayers said it would do. The CPI was up 2.4 percent over the year ending in February. The Fed’s preferred PCE inflation gauge was 2.8 percent in January, with core PCE at 3.1 percent. 

That is still above target, but it is nowhere near the kind of inflation spiral that was supposed to follow Trump’s tariff experiment. More important for ordinary people, real average hourly earnings rose 1.4 percent over the year ending in February, and real average weekly earnings rose 1.7 percent. That means paychecks were still outpacing inflation. For all the commentary about tariff pain, American workers were still gaining purchasing power.

And Americans have been acting like it. 

February retail sales rose 0.6 percent from the previous month and 3.7 percent from a year earlier. Nonstore retailers were up 7.5 percent year over year, and food services and drinking places were up 5.2 percent. In January, personal income rose 0.4 percent, disposable personal income rose 0.9 percent, and consumer spending rose 0.4 percent. Real PCE also edged higher, and the saving rate rose to 4.5 percent. In plain English: households were still earning, still spending, and still saving. Consumers do not behave this way when the economy is truly on the brink.

The production side of the economy looks better than the anti-tariff script allows, too. Industrial production rose 0.2 percent in February after a 0.7 percent increase in January. Total industrial output was 1.4 percent above its year-earlier level, and manufacturing output also rose in February. The most interesting number in that release may be business equipment, which was 6.4 percent above year-earlier levels. That is a meaningful sign of business activity and investment demand. The March ISM manufacturing report told a similar story: the PMI came in at 52.7, new orders at 53.5, production at 55.1, and order backlogs at 54.4. Those are expansion numbers. They do not describe an industrial economy in retreat.

Even the labor market, which clearly has some soft spots, does not look nearly as bad as the most pessimistic storylines suggest. February job openings were still 6.9 million. Hires slowed, yes, but layoffs and discharges were unchanged at 1.7 million, with a layoff rate of just 1.1 percent.

Recessions do not begin simply because hiring cools; they deepen when employers start cutting people loose in large numbers. That panic is not here. Businesses may be cautious, but they are not behaving as if a downturn is already upon them. And when March payrolls came in stronger than expected, that reinforced the larger point: the labor market may be cooler than it was, but it is still resilient.

The strongest argument that Trump’s economy could grow stronger in the coming months lies in the pipeline. 

Census reported that unfilled orders for durable goods rose 0.8 percent in January and have increased in 18 of the last 19 months. That is not what businesses do when demand is evaporating. ISM’s new-orders index has now been in expansion for three straight months, while production has been expanding for five straight months. Those are early indicators, not final verdicts. But early indicators are exactly what matter if you are trying to judge where the economy is headed next rather than where it was three months ago. Right now, they suggest continued activity, not contraction.

None of this proves that every Trump policy has been wise, or that the economy is invulnerable. It is not. Energy shocks, war, and policy volatility are real risks. But the core case for Trump’s economy being stronger than advertised is no longer hard to make. 

It has already weathered tariffs, relentless predictions of disaster, and a messy political environment without sliding into recession. Growth stayed positive. Inflation stayed contained enough that real wages rose. Consumers kept spending. Factories moved back into expansion. Employers stayed reluctant to lay people off. The simplest conclusion may also be the one Trump’s critics like least: this economy is stronger than they keep saying, and barring a major external shock, it has a reasonable chance of looking stronger still by summer.

To say nothing of the midterms.

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)