Team,
You may enjoy this session with Maria Bartiromo.
As always, let me know your thoughts and please share clip with a friend.
Peter
TRANSCRIPT
MARIA BARTIROMO: Joining me now is White House Senior counsel for trade manufacturing, Peter Navarro and Peter, you called it, you were on this program a long time ago saying, we’re going to Dow 50,000. How do you feel today?
SENIOR TRADE COUNSELOR PETER NAVARRO: It’s nice to be right. We were talking on April 7th, thereabouts. The Dow had fallen to 38,000 and this was right around the time President Trump had announced the reciprocal tariffs and Wall Street was in a panic. And what I said to you is that relax, it’s going to 50,000. And the reason I said that is simply because Wall Street and Jay Powell do not understand how the Trump policies can actually stimulate non-inflationary robust growth and rising real wages without a wage price spiral. And the way it works, Maria, it’s the four engines of growth. It’s basically a supply side oriented approach. You have the tax cuts, which stimulate investment a hundred percent on expense, stuff like that. You got the lowering the regulatory burden, which is a pure profit driver because it lowers costs. You’ve got the strategic energy dominance, which doesn’t just lower our transportation, our gas and diesel prices and heating in our homes, but also things like fertilizer and therefore food prices. And you have the tariffs, which Wall Street has wanted to portray as inflationary when it’s just the opposite. What you get with tariffs is you had a massive wave of investment. What does that do? That increases productivity. And productivity is the key to rising real wages. So everything President Trump does, going back to 2016, same four engines of growth. By the way, I made the same prediction back the day after the election in 2016 where I said when the futures were dead red down, I said, it’s going to 25,000 on the Dow. It hit that within a year this time where at 50, I don’t know if we’re going to get to the a hundred thousand that the boss said, but we’ve got no resistance levels now for the technicians and this market’s room to run. Scott Bessent, that was a nice clip, Maria, because that’s his sweet spot. People don’t know, a lot of people don’t know this, but he made billions as a hedge fund manager. He knows that the stock market losing in the future, he knows that Wall Street prospering mean Main Street is going to prosper. And I’m feeling very, very good about 50,000 on the Dow being hit so quickly.
BARTIROMO: Yeah, I mean look, that was an aggressive call that you made when the markets were plummeting. We had a couple of days that the market was down 2000 points in that week that you made and people were worried about liberation day and the tariffs and you came on real confident and said, no, the Dow’s going at 50,000. So congrats on that. We just got the retail sales numbers out, Peter, they were unchanged. The expectation was up four tenths of a percent month over month and up three tenths of a percent when you strip out autos, they were unchanged. But you see a consumer there that is still spending, although people are worried about jobs. So what do you want to say about that worry and this macro story that seems to be a lot better than lots of people give it credit to? I mean, the president’s policies have clearly been behind what feels like a productivity boom.
SENIOR COUNSELOR NAVARRO: Maria, I watched the indicators very, very carefully as a macro guy. The one that caught my eye was last week when the ISM manufacturing index burst five points up and finally got above 50. It’s a diffusion index, zero to a hundred above 50 means we got expansion in manufacturing. We’ve been waiting for that. I dunno if you know this, but during the Biden years, going back to August of 2022, the ISM was below 50 for all that time. And people have been trying to spin somehow that the tariffs are hurting, not helping American manufacturing, but we say, no, no, no, no. You got to have the construction jobs first, then you get the manufacturing. All the other data points were indicating strong manufacturing. For some reason the ISM, which is supposed to be a leading indicator, was lagging, but it came roaring forward and everything. We’re seeing consumer conferences is on the rise now. We got the ISM going, durable goods are good. The GDPs flying, it’s going to be a great year in 2026. And Wall Street is signaling that things are going to be really good for Main Street. I can’t wait till the rebates Maria start coming in to the American people. The big beautiful bill. That’s where it’s at.
BARTIROMO: Yeah, I mean we just got retail sales year over year up 2.4%. Import and export were basically, well, the exports were up at three tenths of a percent better than the estimated up one 10th of a percent. A lot of good news, Lee Carter, the Democrats keep saying that things are going poorly. Are people buying that or do they see actually what Peter is talking about, which happens to be a boom in this economy right now?
LEE CARTER: So we’ve talked about this. There’s a lag between when things start to get better, when people feel that they’re better. And so I think we’re seeing all these indicators one thing after another, and I think people are going to start to feel it. And as you’re talking about Peter, what you’re talking about coming ahead, the rebates, I think, and when you’re seeing tax season come up, when people are starting to see the difference, I think we’re going to start to see a real change in consumer sentiment. And we’re seeing that their behaviors are actually indicative of, it’s not as bad as they feel it is. And I think we’re going to see it continue to get better. Peter, real quick.
SENIOR COUNSELOR NAVARRO: Yeah. One thing I want to note. The jobs reports coming to come out tomorrow, 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 just 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 illegals. Americans were going to the unemployment lines. That’s totally reversed. And now 50,000 a month is going to be more like what we need. So Wall Street, when this stuff comes out, they can’t rain on that parade. They have to adjust for the fact that we’re deporting millions of illegals out of our job market.
BARTIROMO: That’s a good point. But it sounds like you’re expecting a week number tomorrow.
SENIOR COUNSELOR NAVARRO: No, not expecting a week number. I’m just saying that going forward when we see a number under a hundred thousand, we don’t wring our hands. We say, yeah, that’s going to be steady state.
BARTIROMO: Peter, great to see you.
SENIOR COUNSELOR NAVARRO: It’s all good. Maria, always great to be with you.
BARTIROMO: Thank you so much for being here, Peter, and for your analysis always Peter Navarro in Washington.
