This is The Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I'm your host, Greg Sargent. Donald Trump's administration blames everything it possibly can on immigrants, whether it's crime or welfare fraud or even high housing costs. But this week, Trump's top trade advisor blamed yet another thing on immigrants, bad jobs numbers. Peter Navarro said openly that we should revise our expectations for job creation downward because there are fewer immigrants in the country, and he presented that as almost an achievement. We think this provides an opening to look at what mega ideology and mega economics is really trying to accomplish, and we're fortunate to be doing this today with economist Paul Krugman, whose sub-stack is an absolute must read. Paul, nice to have you on. Good to be on. So Peter Navarro was discussing this week's jobs numbers, and he seemed to say directly that we should expect lower numbers because Trump has deported so many immigrants. Listen to this. We have to revise our expectations down significantly for what a monthly job number should look like. When we were letting in 2 million illegal aliens, they're coming in, coming in. We had to produce 200,000 jobs a month for steady state. And by the way, all of the jobs that we were creating in Biden years were going to illegal, Americans were going to the unemployment lines. It's totally reverse, and now 50,000 a month is going to be more like what we need. So all street, when this stuff comes out, they can't reign on that parade. They have to adjust for the fact that we're deporting millions of illegal. That's a good out of our job market. Paul, I think it would be helpful to take this in two pieces. First he claims there that all the jobs in the Biden years went to immigrants and none went to native born Americans. This is a staple on the mega right at this point. A desperate effort to make Joe Biden's job creation record look worse than Trump's. One, in fact, it's substantially better. Can you address that underlying claim? Yeah, I mean, the truth is, by the way, we don't have great numbers. And especially it's very difficult now because the surveys are showing fewer immigrants in the US labor force. But would you admit that you were an immigrant, an undocumented immigrant to now? I mean, it's so it's really a disorder. We don't actually have good numbers on this, but it's very clear that employment was doing fine for native born Americans during the Biden years. The unemployment rate stayed low. It fell a lot early in the Biden years and stayed low to the end. There's no indication at all that immigrants were taking all the jobs. We did have faster labor force growth because immigrants were expanding the available labor force. But that's a good thing. I mean, that's among other things, workers pay into Social Security and Medicare and help provide benefits for the beneficiaries who are all overwhelmingly native born. So this denigration of Biden, but then, okay, so that's a basically false claim that they continue to make because the fact that something is easily refuted from facts has never stopped these people. So your point about immigrants contributing to the economy and that being a good thing brings us to the other big piece of what Navarro is saying here. He's admitting that jobs numbers might be coming in lower because Trump has removed a lot of working immigrants from the country. Now by the time people listen to this conversation on Wednesday, we might have the jobs numbers for January that he's anticipating. Maybe they'll be bad. Maybe they'll be good. I don't know, but importantly, Navarro says here that is a general matter in future months. If we see jobs numbers under 100,000, we shouldn't ring our hands about it. Paul, what's your reaction to this larger set of claims? Well, the idea that normal job growth is going to be slower because of greatly reduced immigration and possibly negative immigration. That's actually what any business economists will tell you. Sure. We have a slower growing labor force. We just can't grow jobs as fast as we had in the past. But what is amazing is the source. In the whole basis of Navarro and even more Stephen Miller's ideology is the idea that foreigners are coming in stealing our jobs. Actually, they're coming here. They're lazy bombs going on welfare and also stealing our jobs. Answer the story. Now he's saying, well, actually, if there are fewer immigrants coming here to work, then we can't create as many jobs which is in direct contradiction to that ideology. The idea is there's a fixed number of jobs immigrants are taking them, but also the immigrants are coming. That's being slower job creation. You can't have it both ways. Not only are immigrants taking jobs and also taking welfare, they're also eating people's pets. You forgot that one. Yeah. Also that too. Yeah. And driving up housing prices, even though a lot of immigrants are construction workers. I mean, it's the incoherence of the story reflects the fact that this, that none of the ostensible reasons that they are anti-immigration are the real reason. It's not about jobs. It's not about, you know, it's about they want, they want you were brown people in America. Well, that I think is what makes this even more striking. Navarro claims here, kind of bring a rare kind of clarity to what mega ideology and mega economics, if that's a thing, are really trying to accomplish it. In a sense, Navarro is saying that lower jobs numbers are a good thing, provided that their cause or supposed cause is that there are fewer immigrants in the country. That's revealing. It seems to say explicitly that the top Trump priority is reducing the number of immigrants in the country, including ones who are working and not criminals, regardless of what the consequences are for the economy. In other words, Paul, ethno nationalist reengineering of the country is the paramount aim, and that's a good accomplishment, even if it hurts the economy. Is that the right way to think about this? Yeah, I mean, you know, well, liberals like me say that immigrants are good for the economy, and in effect, Navarro is saying, yeah, they're good for the economy. We don't care about that. So that is not the line they've been selling to the public. But I mean, you know, Navarro, at least on this, he's not being stupid. In fact, going forward, we're going to be seeing a substantially lower job growth. In fact, you know, one of the things that happens with these jobs numbers is that they're all the job growth since Trump took off is very low. Job growth since he put his tariffs on in, you know, April is basically nil. And we expect those numbers to be revised. There's a whole lot of technical stuff about this, but not not out of any malice, but because the way that Bureau of Labor Statistics has to deal with a complicated economy, job numbers do get revised. Most economists think that we had no job growth in 2025, or close enough within measurement error. And it may be getting worse. I don't know whether people like Navarro, people, Kevin Haset, White House, head of the National Economic Council, also said, kind of tried to talk down people's expectations for these jobs. I don't know whether they have some advanced word on it. They're not supposed to, but not supposed to. People hasn't been in much of a help these days. But we certainly are looking at a, you know, nothing like it. Making America great again is not something you achieve by actually starving the economy of workers. Right. And I want to underscore the point you made about how they don't tell this story to the public ordinarily. In other words, I think Navarro here is kind of unmasking almost accidentally the core of the mega scam about the economy in immigrants. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, I think he's doing it because he does. He is trying to soften the blow of what is probably going to be at best a disappointing jobs report. But he is, he's not completely ignorant to the economics. It is in fact the case as any Wall Street Congress can tell you that with immigration, you know, having collapsed, that we're going to see lower job growth in the future. But he's, that is not at all what he and his colleagues were telling us. So it's the scamminess is fundamental with the whole universe. What is the story they were telling us? The story they were telling is kind of there's a certain number of jobs. And if a foreigner, if an immigrant takes it, then it's not there for an American. And so immigration translates it to unemployment and lost opportunity for native born Americans, which is not true in theory, not true in history, not true in the facts. When, you know, it's, it's, but that is the story they've been telling. And they amazingly, they tell it even for highly skilled specialist jobs. They treat jobs and in high technology as being like, well, there are these good jobs in the high technology. And if we can stop South Asians from coming and taking them, then they'll be available for, for people from the rule, from rural America, you know, which is, you know, crazy. That is, that is the story they have been telling to justify what is at some level just about racism and nationalism. Right. And that's the core of the scam. Can I just try to boil us down? Essentially what Navarro admitted here, I think, is that if you actually take an immigrant out of the country, it doesn't necessarily leave a job for a native born American, right? That's right. He's admitting that the, that that that that slowing down immigration means actually lower job creation and more or less one for one. Inplicitly, he was saying that that for every immigrant worker, we don't attract to the United States or don't allow into the United States. We lose a job. That's, I mean, that's kind of obvious, but also completely shocking to hear it from a Trump administration official. To stay up to date on all the news that you need to know, there's no better place than right here on the DSR network. And there's no better way to enjoy the DSR network than by becoming a member. Members enjoying ad-free listening experience, access to our discord community, exclusive content, early episode access, and more. Use code DSR26 for a 25% off discount on sign up at the DSR Networking.com. That's code DSR26 at the DSR Networking.com. Slash by. Thank you and enjoy the show. It certainly is. Well, you had this great piece arguing that for Trump and Maga, ethno nationalist satism, those are my words, is fundamental. Removing as many immigrants as possible for ethnic cleansing purposes is ideologically more important to them than anything economics related, you wrote. And I think that's right. I want to broaden this. You can see this in other areas as well. So for instance, Stephen Miller is diverting massive law enforcement resources away from serious crimes like child and drug trafficking and putting them toward deportations to get the removal numbers as high as possible, which requires focusing on removing nonviolent people because there aren't enough criminal immigrants there. So Paul, there you have Trump and Miller directly prioritizing ethno nationalist re-engineering over public safety. They're saying the former is more important than the latter. And they're also saying that this re-engineering is more important than the economy as well. How do you think about all this? Well, it's not the first time that things like this have happened. The US economy basically became the world's largest economy on the basis of mass immigration from the late 19th and early 20th century and then slammed the door shut in 1924. And we pay to price. The US was a smaller, you know, at more troubled economic growth in some ways, even we can, so there's a speculative thing. But in some ways, the cut of immigration probably plays some role in at least extending the Great Depression. This is sort of a really obvious point. What is really striking is that they really, it's not just, I would say, you know, said to take some of a juvenile writing, the cultural side where they are determined to push this kind of, you know, white's only cultural vision when actually, you know, the music that people actually want to listen to much of it is from not from not from white people, not necessarily in English. And if you're that's a real loss, but they're basically, basically, if you is forcing us to listen to Kid Rock is worth it as long as it is less influence of non-white people in our society. So yeah, this is, and what's particularly the case, let me say this, the, you might say, well, if you know, a few are jobs, but for the, for Native Americans, they're Native born Americans that, you know, they are going to still have jobs, but there is so much that we depend on immigrants for. I'm working now. There's some, some new work about just how dependent, careful the elderly is on immigrants. It's, it's a very large part of that workforce and certainly by experience with my, my late parents and my late mother-in-law was that it was almost certainly in the state of New Jersey. It was almost entirely immigrant. So we're sacrificing the work is that we need to take care of ourselves. We're sacrificing the people who pay the money into social security and Medicare through the payroll tax, all in the name of trying to restore a kind of white's only paradise that really never existed. I mean, just to put in perspective how crazy this is, we are looking at demographic, serious demographic problems over the long term. We're looking at an aging workforce. We're looking at, you know, ballooning costs for the social safety net, especially for the elderly. And there are people who are banging down our doors, begging us, right? Begging us for the opportunity to come here and pay taxes into those things and pay for those things. You're saying no. Is that the size of this? That is the size of it. We have, I mean, we were, until, you know, a year and a half ago, the US long term outlook looked better than that of other advanced countries because we were open. We've caused we had immigration. Like everybody, we have declining fertility, but immigrants were helping us to keep working age population on a growth path. And that's, now we're saying no. We don't want those people. How is it going to work? And it's, yeah, the, the all modern societies are run to a large extent on having working age people pay taxes and do essential labor for a growing elderly population. And we're just cutting all of that off out of nothing but prejudice. I mean, it sounds like that's basically the size of this. I want to point out though that Democrats have an argument here that they're not making about this set of priorities. All these sets of priorities we're talking about. Obviously, Democrats can say ice's brutality is a moral horror and stain on the nation, which it is. But they could also say that Trump and Maga think that it's good to spend billions on huge prison camps and good to divert massive law enforcement resources away from child and drug trafficking to imprison non criminals who would otherwise contribute vitally to our economy. And what otherwise be giving us money in the form of tax, tax payments to fund all these things we need to fund. These are insane priorities. And if the public understood them more, I think Trump would be even more in popular. You had this great line in your piece saying that failure to engage on these things is both the moral and stupid politics. When you talk about what Democrats could be doing with all this stuff, maybe more? Yeah. Well, I'm not a political strategist, although I'm not sure that the political strategist exactly covered themselves with glory in recent years. But it does look, it's really the sea change. There was a brief moment in 2024 when anti-immigrant rhetoric got some traction and it combined with the fact that we had about of inflation and all that. And it was way over people way over interpreted the 2024 election. What that the American people actually liked, Stephen Miller type policies. They really don't. And I've been much, both horrified and greatly reassured by what's happening in Minneapolis, which kind of confirms living in New York, what you realize is that when you're actually when immigrants are your neighbors after a little while, you stop thinking of them as foreigners with a different color and start to hit them with people. And so the public doesn't like this public. Still, all right, I understand that people don't want the sense that the border is out of control. But I think that there's a real opportunity to crusade not just for the humanity, but to say we need these people. This is America. We are the melting pot. We are able to attract the world's best and brightest. Why are we sending them away? Well, just to underscore your point, there was a certain type of pundit, a few of them worked at your former employer who really saw Trump's 2024 victory and overreacted or willfully misinterpret it, I think. And essentially said to themselves, okay, this must represent a large cultural turn against immigrants. In fact, what I think happened is Biden's border policies were really, really rough. He was dealing with certain challenges that even Trump is not. But putting aside whether Biden's to blame for them or not, to some degree probably is, that was what people were reacting to. And out of control, border, and they kind of thermostatically went to the other party on this issue. It wasn't like this wholesale or kind of massive sea change, cultural sea change against immigrants that I can see. No, and in fact, people like you would need to divide things up into issues. And you know, clear distinctions, how do you feel about immigration? How do you feel about inflation? I think that's not how most voters react. There was a kind of field that were vibes saying the things were out of control. Prices are way up and stuff. There are all these people coming across the border and it all got intermingled. But there wasn't a fundamental cultural change. Polling on immigration is right back. If anything, more favorable to immigrants than it was before. The whole idea that there was a mandate, I don't think there was a mandate even for a general crackdown on immigration. And there certainly wasn't a mandate for what we're seeing and it was seeing ice doing. And Democrats, I think, are still running. A lot of Democratic politicians are still running scared. They're still basically buying into the interpretation that there was a mandate for harsh anti-immigrant policies. And they can say, no, actually, no, this is America. And I have to say it's really particularly, you know, for how many, given how many Americans are the descendants of people who came in, you know, who were just like this. I mean, when when barrel and fagel Krugman came to America from what is now Belarus, lots of people said, oh, these are foreigners. They can never become proper Americans. And I think that other live Americans actually do, given a chance to pause and reflect, do, in fact, understand that this is the American way. Well, we had a piece that TNR.com folks can check that out. It was a deep dive into Stephen Miller. And I'd like to bring it up real quick, because some of the stuff he said earlier in this discussion is germane here. He, his immigrant ancestors also came here in the early 1900s from, you know, from that same part of Russia. And it turns out that Stephen Miller has written positively about the 1924 law that you talked about earlier, which imposed racial quotas on immigration and essentially created a real stoppage in immigration for some time. You pointed out that there was like, you know, there's some, some data shows that this might have made the country a little smaller, might have prolonged the Great Depression. But Stephen Miller, interestingly, has written about that quota system, or at least the kind of, you know, net negative migration that resulted in a couple of the decades there, as evidence of American strength and power, when, of course, there were all kinds of other reasons that post-war America was, you know, such powerhouse. And then, of course, Stephen Miller calls the 1965 act, which ended the 1924 quotas, you know, the moment when it all started to go to shit. Can you tell me what's wrong with that whole story? Yeah, I mean, the look, there was a great, great generation of economic growth after World War II, even though we had very few immigrants, but that was lots of reasons for that. And by the way, that decade, that decade, I keep saying decade, that generation of growth took place with much, much higher taxes on the rich than we have now. So, you know, it's stronger unions and strong unions that was all together, a very different, it was a society that if you asked, you know, the right these days, they would say, oh, it must have been grass growing on the streets. But we, most of our history as a nation, we've had substantial immigration. And our great-eless as a nation owes a lot to the fact that we were able to bring in so many people and assimilate them. And the idea that everything went to hell after immigrants started coming in, you know, New York City was at its lowest sheer, as far as back as the records go of immigrants in the population, circa 1970. I remember New York in the 1970s, I've been around for a while. It was a lot more like the hellscape that right-wingers think it is now. Back then, it was, it down with those were the days when we, when you, there were large parts that said you didn't get there go if you were on foot. Those were the days of high crime and time square was full of porn shops and drug dealers so the idea that we have been worse than does a society, we were by almost every, both, you know, metrics, I'm sorry, economists talking, but by almost everything that you can, but what you see with your naked eye and the available measures immigration has been fine and why, I mean, I can only, I'm not going to try and psychoanalyze Stephen Miller or the people around him, but it's clear that this is not really about what objective reality. Yeah, I think John Gens might have called this postcolonial New York kind of the New York that we all know now and that's very full of immigrants from all over all over the world, especially places like Queens and Brooklyn, which are Queens is like in my lifetime, Queens became enormously more diverse than it ever was when I was a kid. I grew up in New York as well. And this kind of postcolonial New York is in many ways, you know, a wonderful place. And the mega story is just bafflingly wrong. Yeah, I worked summers as a mailman during college in Queens. And let me tell you, it's better now. Yeah, it absolutely is. Just to close this out by going big picture, Trump and mega economics have told us a certain story. We kind of got it that earlier. It's that because of immigrants and I guess also because of globalization, a lot of able body prime working age young men are being denied gainful employment. And this is the critical part as a result, they're molding away and suffering social decline, opioids, you know, hollowed out towns. So in some sense, immigration and globalization is blamed for this social crisis for all the young men, especially young white men. And we're told that if you just stop the immigration and get rid of all the immigrants, then all of a sudden they'll be able to stampede into all this new employment and flourish. Now Navarro seems to be admitting that removing immigrants isn't leading to that though. It's just leading to fewer jobs. But how is that bigger a mega story, the big mega story, fairing after a year of Trump? Well, what's really striking is not just that job growth has been virtually nil since Trump took office, but that manufacturing is down, manufacturing employment is down. Manly jobs, the commas Joey Palatano has been going through that. Manly jobs are manufacturing construction, basically things that rely on upper body strength are down. So whatever the crisis of certain young men is real, typically in rural areas that have been left behind, but had nothing to do with immigration and not much to do with globalization, maybe a bit but not immigration. It's not immigrants are taking jobs in eastern Kentucky, right? So this is so the issue is real, but and the solutions that Mark is proposing, Archa or now that Trump is trying to implement, are doing nothing. They're making things worse for the people they were allegedly going to help. So if it was some other kind of other group of people, they might be saying, well, okay, look back to the drawing board. We seem to have been wrong about how this would play out, but of course they won't. Folks, if you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to check out Paul Krugman's sub-stack because man, I am learning so much from it every day and he talks about this kind of stuff all the time. Paul, thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.
