The Navarro Express

Consumer confidence just beat expectations, with forward-looking sentiment turning higher — a key early signal for spending and growth. While households still expect elevated inflation, actual price pressures are running lower, suggesting perceptions are lagging reality. As inflation fears fade and expectations realign with data, confidence has room to rise further — supporting stronger consumption and sustained economic momentum.

Housing starts just beat expectations and single-family construction is stabilizing, signaling that the Trump affordability reset may be underway. After years of surging rents, high mortgage rates, and distorted housing demand, deportations, deregulation, and easing inflation are beginning to cool rental markets and lower borrowing costs. 

ICE is the enforcement arm of federal immigration law—executing removal orders, detaining individuals with final deportation rulings, and targeting serious offenders. This episode breaks down what happens when ICE funding is cut: fewer detention beds, fewer removals, and growing backlogs. It’s not rhetoric—it’s arithmetic. Public safety policy is about incentives, enforcement, and consequences. Law without enforcement isn’t compassion, it’s chaos.

January’s ISM Manufacturing Index hit 52.6 — back in expansion and the strongest reading in over a year. That single number undercuts claims that Trump’s tariffs are hurting industry. Investment is rising, factories are being built, and construction jobs are leading the way before permanent manufacturing payrolls arrive. The data show an industrial revival taking shape under Trumpnomics.

January CPI shows continued disinflation: prices up just 0.17% for the month, core steady, and the 10-year yield falling even after a strong jobs report. Energy cooled, core goods were flat, shelter is moderating, and real wages are rising. This is supply-driven disinflation with solid growth—not recession.

Blowout January jobs report: 172,000 private-sector jobs added while federal payrolls fell. Unemployment dipped as prime-age participation hit its highest level in over two decades. With big Biden-era job revisions, the picture is clear: a shift from bureaucracy to private production, rising real wages, and a Trumpnomics-driven expansion.

Congress is moving to undo one of President Trump’s most important trade enforcement wins: closing the de minimis tariff loophole. After Trump shut down a system that let foreign sellers evade billions in tariffs while flooding the U.S. with unchecked packages—including counterfeits and fentanyl—a new bill seeks to quietly bring it back under a friendly-sounding name. 

The latest Producer Price Index came in a bit hot—but inflation is a trend story, not a one-month headline. The real signal: energy is down, goods prices are flat, and inflation remains far below its peak. What’s rising is tied to healthy markets and returning industrial activity. Orders are coming back, factories are busy again, and America’s manufacturing muscle is rebuilding under President Trump—whether Jay Powell wants to hear it or not.

For decades, foreign dumping — China first and worst — hollowed out America’s steel industry, shutting mills, wiping out jobs, and leaving the U.S. dependent on overseas steel for everything from bridges to warships. President Trump’s 2018 tariffs stopped the collapse, but Biden weakened them with loopholes and exemptions. In 2025, Trump doubled steel tariffs to 50%, and the results were immediate: U.S. steel production rose, America surpassed Japan for the first time since 1999, and investment is flooding back into modern American mills. Steel is back — because tariffs work.