On Wednesday, Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, appeared on Fox News alongside host Martha MacCallum, who pressed him over the continued surge in inflation, during which he continued to tout a false increase of 545,000 new manufacturing jobs.
MacCallum pressed Deese over the continued record-setting surge of inflation, which reached 8.6% in May, a high not seen in over 40 years in the U.S. She noted that David Asman from Fox Business said, “what you have to do when inflation is in this situation is increase supply. You need to increase manufacturing.”
“Why not do that?” MacCallum pressed.
“Here’s what we’ve seen over the last 15 months,” Deese continued. “545,000 new manufacturing jobs created in America. That’s the fastest rate in 30 years. Companies investing and bringing production back to the United States, building more secure and resilient supply chains at rates that we haven’t seen in a very long time.”
“How come that’s not making a difference in inflation, Brian?” MacCallum pushed back.
“Because you talk about stable and steady growth and your team talks about the transition to stable and steady growth, yet we’ve got 8.6% inflation, and you’ve got negative growth in the last GDP, and the projection for this quarter is .09%,” she continued.
“So when do you expect us to see a meaningful change in inflation or in growth? Give us a rough idea, how many months? How many years?”
Deese repeated his claim that manufacturing is rising at record highs. However, he asserted that consumer prices have remained high because of the nation’s intense reliance on semiconductors in China and called on Congress to pass legislation to decrease dependence on foreign-made semiconductors.
MacCallum was not taking the passive answers from Deese and continued to press him for a response regarding a resolution for the soaring inflation. “When do you expect to see inflation at 2%? Will it take three months? Will it take a year? Will it take two years? What are your projections telling you?”
In a passive response, Deese acknowledged, “there’s a lot of global uncertainty out there; we know that the price of oil and the price of gas at the pump are being affected by Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine. But we also know if we take the kinds of steps that we’re talking about, we will get to that process quickly.”
Deese avoided answering the question but continued to assert the false claim that there was record job creation in manufacturing under Biden.
According to the America First Policy Institute, Deese’s claims are entirely false.
April marked the 12th consecutive month of job growth above 400,000. However, in the nine months before Joe Biden took office, from May 2020 to January 2021, job growth averaged nearly 1.4 million each month.
Despite the Biden Administrations’ assertions, the U.S. did not see the “largest 15-month job gain in 15 years” for manufacturing. Even though U.S. manufacturing jobs increased by 545,000 over the past fifteen months, manufacturing employment actually grew by 927,000 jobs in the 15 months before and including July 2021.
The vast majority of that increase in manufacturing employment occurred during the Trump Administration (+761,000 jobs) and not during the Biden Administration (+166,000 jobs).