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Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
For the first time in 50 years, the U.S. will likely experience negative net migration, shrinking the U.S. workforce—and economic growth by extension
The U.S. may see more than 500,000 people emigrate from the country as a result of President Donald Trump's aggressive deportation campaign, according to a recent report from the American Enterprise Institute. With foreign-born workers making up a disproportional amount of the American workforce, shrinking immigration could result in a hit to U.S. labor growth and consumer spending. These factors could lead to an up to 0.4% hit to U.S. GDP growth. President Donald Trump's efforts to deport millions of immigrants could likely result in a hit to the U.S. labor force that would shrink the country's gross domestic product, new data shows. A working paper published this month from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative economics policy center, found the Trump administration's immigration policy will likely result in a negative net migration in 2025—something the U.S. has not experienced in decades—that would shrink labor participation and 'put significant downward pressure on growth in the labor force and employment.' Net migration in 2025 will likely be between 525,000 individuals leaving the U.S. and 115,000 migrants entering the country, but will likely be negative, according to the report. With fewer immigrants in the country available to work, combined with a decrease in consumer spending—immigrants had $299 billion in spending power in 2023 and paid $167 billion in rent—U.S. GDP growth may shrink by between 0.3% and 0.4%. U.S. real GDP is about $23.5 trillion, which means the economic tradeoff of the deportations is roughly between $70.5 billion to $94 billion in lost economic output annually. The drag on what would usually be 2.8% annual growth would indicate a slowing in economic expansion as employers not only hire fewer people to fill fewer roles, but consumers spend less in an economically uncertain environment. 'Our workforce is disproportionately made up of immigrants relative to their share of the population, and because of that we…really can't sustain a high level of job growth with the U.S.-born population alone, because there just aren't enough bodies, essentially, to do that,' report co-author Tara Watson, a Brookings Institute economist and professor of economics at Williams College, told Fortune. The foreign-born U.S. labor force—which made up 19.2% of the total labor force as of 2024—has shrunk by 735,000 people since January, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. But the departure of foreign-born workers in the U.S. now follows an immigration surge during the Biden administration, which helped create a swell of economic growth. The Congressional Budget Office projected the increase in migrants would boost the U.S. nominal GDP by $8.9 trillion between 2024 to 2034. Meanwhile, the U.S.-born workforce is shrinking as many age out and retire. Wendy Edelberg, Watson's co-author and a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, called the projected loss of immigrant workers 'startling' and sees more trouble on the horizon. The U.S. has seen a surge in work permit applications in the first half of 2025, suggesting to Edelberg that many immigrants—out of concern for Trump's immigration policy—rushed to secure employment ahead of a crackdown, contributing to a healthy labor market and a 147,000 boost to payroll enrollment in June. But 'we're not going to ride that wave forever,' Edelberg told Fortune. She and Watson projected a shrinking labor force would result in payment enrollment growth of only 30,000 to 40,000 per month in the second half of the year. This number would be healthy and not indicative of a recession because it will simply indicate a much lower ceiling for labor force growth, Edelberg said. If weak immigration continues into 2027, Edelberg predicted that the jobs figure could turn negative. Immigration has been the cornerstone of the Trump administration's policy agenda, with the president on day one of his second term vowing to crack down on undocumented migrants to the U.S. Trump's Big Beautiful Bill injected $45 billion into the Department of Homeland Security to expand deportation facilities and gives Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) more than $11 billion annually to increase its workforce of deportation officers. The White House called AEI's report on the negative economic impacts of mass deportations 'baseless fear-mongering in defense of illegal immigration,' claiming that 10% of young adults in the U.S. are neither employed, in higher education, or seeking vocational training. 'There is no shortage of American minds and hands to grow our labor force,' White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told Fortune in a statement. 'President Trump's mass deportation campaign means higher wages and more opportunity for American workers.' Unlike Trump's first term, in which he oversaw a more modest curtailing of immigration, the president has ramped up deportations after a sluggish start to his second administration, with Watson and Edelberg projecting the removal of about 300,000 immigrants in 2025 alone. Beyond the nearly 67,000 immigrants the Trump administration has detained in fiscal 2025 and more than 71,000 deported, according to ICE data, others have self-deported or left voluntarily out of growing concern over hostile policies as part of the out-migration, according to AEI's study. Watson warned net migration could be even lower in 2026, as the administration likely refuses to renew temporary work visas and foreign-born students snub American universities in favor of higher education opportunities elsewhere. 'The environment is going to make people like students reluctant to come study here,' Watson said. 'Temporary workers may be questioning whether this is the right place for them to come to work.' Businesses are seeing the early consequences of weakened immigration, with farm workers refusing to show up to work out of fear of ICE raids, Bloomberg reported. Nursing homes are similarly struggling to attract a workforce as the Trump administration revokes some immigrants' legal status and slows the immigration process for documented migrants. 'We feel completely beat up right now,' Deke Cateau, CEO of Atlanta-based nursing home operator A.G. Rhodes, which has one-third of its staff made up of immigrants, told the Associated Press. 'The pipeline is getting smaller and smaller.' Beyond concern about a shrinking GDP, Apollo chief economist Torsten Sløk warned that if the U.S. were to deport 3,000 undocumented immigrants per day for a year, the country's labor force would drop by 1 million people. Workplaces with high rates of immigrant employment could subsequently see an increase in wages as they struggle to attract workers. 'Lowering the labor force by 1 million will reduce the participation rate by 0.4 percentage points, which will lower the unemployment rate, lower job growth, and increase wage inflation, particularly in the sectors where unauthorized immigrants work—namely construction, agriculture, and leisure and hospitality,' Sløk said in a Saturday blog post. 'In short, deportations are a stagflationary impulse to the economy, resulting in lower employment growth and higher wage inflation,' he continued. While some parts of the U.S. could experience stagflationary environments, stagflation could be tempered in areas with large immigrant populations as their spending power wanes and demand for industries like housing construction decreases, Edelberg said. Watson posited that besides GDP, shrinking immigration will most heavily be felt in Social Security. Undocumented immigrants paid $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes in 2022, according to a 2024 analysis by the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. 'There's a very tight correlation between how many people are coming into the country and the degree to which we can sustain Social Security at its current levels going forward,' she said. More broadly, the economic ramifications of Trump's mass deportation campaign are only one part of the policy's impact, Edelberg said, the other half being the palpable changes in the feeling within American cities spurred by ICE raids and the mobilization of the National Guard to accelerate deportations. 'The broad macroeconomic events are going to be pretty modest,' she said. 'In terms of how we're affected by this immigration policy, I think they will be dwarfed by how we engage with this policy, just in the images and in our communities.' This story was originally featured on Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
New Straits Times
2 days ago
- Business
- New Straits Times
Trump sours on Putin, but bromance may not be over
EVER since his political rise a decade ago, Donald Trump has sung the praises of Vladimir Putin – the Russian president was a "strong leader" who, perhaps more important, would often say "very good things" about him. With his announcement Monday of new arms for Ukraine via Europe and tariff threats on Russia, Trump's bromance with Putin has hit a new low – but it may not have run its course. Trump, who had vowed to end the Ukraine war within a day of returning to the White House, said he was "disappointed" in Putin, who has kept attacking Ukraine as if the leaders' telephone conversations "didn't mean anything." "I go home, I tell the first lady, 'You know, I spoke to Vladimir today, we had a wonderful conversation. She said, 'Oh really? Another city was just hit.'" "I don't want to say he's an assassin, but he's a tough guy. It's been proven over the years. He's fooled a lot of people," Trump said. Trump quickly rejected that he was among those fooled and again insisted that the 2022 invasion of Ukraine was the fault of his predecessor Joe Biden, who championed a hard line on Russia. Brandishing his favoUrite weapon, Trump gave Russia 50 days to comply before facing 100 per cent tariffs on countries that purchase from Russia, but stopped short of backing a bill before Congress for up to 500 percent tariffs. Russia's own trade with the United States has slowed down a trickle. Trump had "promised that he could get Putin to the negotiating table, and he has failed to do that," said Heather Conley, a former State Department policymaker on Russia now at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. His tariff threat "shows frustration that he has failed to do it, but I don't see it as a big policy change," she said. Trump stunned European allies on February 28 when he publicly berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House, telling him he was ungrateful for billions of dollars in weapons under Biden. Trump then briefly held up new military and intelligence. For the US president, a transactional-minded businessman, Putin committed a key offense – undermining Trump's self-image as a deal-maker. "For six months, President Trump tried to entice Putin to the table. The attacks have gone up, not down," Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally who has led the push for tough new sanctions on Russia, told CBS News show "Face The Nation." "One of the biggest miscalculations Putin has made is to play Trump," Graham said. Yet Trump has repeatedly shown a willingness to trust Putin, despite firm warnings from within the US government. Most famously, he sided with Putin over US intelligence at a 2018 news conference after they met in Helsinki after the Russian president denied meddling to support Trump in his first election. For observers of Putin, the longest-serving leader in Moscow since Stalin, there was never much chance he would accept compromise on Ukraine or work with the West. Putin has rued the demise of Russia's influence with the fall of the Soviet Union as a historic calamity and rejected the idea that Ukraine has its own historical identity. With Russia making small but steady gains on the battlefield and bringing in North Korean troops, Putin has put his entire country on war footing, Conley said. "The Kremlin has thrown everything into this," she said. "President Putin believes that this is just going to be a slow erosion of Ukraine's position and the West's position, and he will win this conflict on its own merits," she said. Mark Montgomery, a retired US rear admiral and Senate policy aide, said Putin believed in what has been referred to as TACO – Trump Always Chickens Out. Putin "thought he could take it to the limit each time, and he found out he was wrong," said Montgomery, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, a hawkish research group. "I don't think this stops until Putin feels either weapons system pain or economic pain that he cannot sustain."
Int'l Business Times
2 days ago
- Business
- Int'l Business Times
Trump Sours On Putin, But Bromance May Not Be Over
Ever since his political rise a decade ago, Donald Trump has sung the praises of Vladimir Putin -- the Russian president was a "strong leader" who, perhaps more important, would often say "very good things" about him. With his announcement Monday of new arms for Ukraine via Europe and tariff threats on Russia, Trump's bromance with Putin has hit a new low -- but it may not have run its course. Trump, who had vowed to end the Ukraine war within a day of returning to the White House, said he was "disappointed" in Putin, who has kept attacking Ukraine as if the leaders' telephone conversations "didn't mean anything." "I go home, I tell the first lady, 'You know, I spoke to Vladimir today, we had a wonderful conversation. She said, 'Oh really? Another city was just hit.'" "I don't want to say he's an assassin, but he's a tough guy. It's been proven over the years. He's fooled a lot of people," Trump said. Trump quickly rejected that he was among those fooled and again insisted that the 2022 invasion of Ukraine was the fault of his predecessor Joe Biden, who championed a hard line on Russia. Brandishing his favorite weapon, Trump gave Russia 50 days to comply before facing 100 percent tariffs on countries that purchase from Russia, but stopped short of backing a bill before Congress for up to 500 percent tariffs. Russia's own trade with the United States has slowed down a trickle. Trump had "promised that he could get Putin to the negotiating table, and he has failed to do that," said Heather Conley, a former State Department policymaker on Russia now at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. His tariff threat "shows frustration that he has failed to do it, but I don't see it as a big policy change," she said. Trump stunned European allies on February 28 when he publicly berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, telling him he was ungrateful for billions of dollars in weapons under Biden. Trump then briefly held up new military and intelligence. For the US president, a transactional-minded businessman, Putin committed a key offense -- undermining Trump's self-image as a deal-maker. "For six months, President Trump tried to entice Putin to the table. The attacks have gone up, not down," Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally who has led the push for tough new sanctions on Russia, told CBS News show "Face The Nation." "One of the biggest miscalculations Putin has made is to play Trump," Graham said. Yet Trump has repeatedly shown a willingness to trust Putin, despite firm warnings from within the US government. Most famously, he sided with Putin over US intelligence at a 2018 news conference after they met in Helsinki after the Russian president denied meddling to support Trump in his first election. For observers of Putin, the longest-serving leader in Moscow since Stalin, there was never much chance he would accept compromise on Ukraine or work with the West. Putin has rued the demise of Russia's influence with the fall of the Soviet Union as a historic calamity and rejected the idea that Ukraine has its own historical identity. With Russia making small but steady gains on the battlefield and bringing in North Korean troops, Putin has put his entire country on war footing, Conley said. "The Kremlin has thrown everything into this," she said. "President Putin believes that this is just going to be a slow erosion of Ukraine's position and the West's position, and he will win this conflict on its own merits," she said. Mark Montgomery, a retired US rear admiral and Senate policy aide, said Putin believed in what has been referred to as TACO -- Trump Always Chickens Out. Putin "thought he could take it to the limit each time, and he found out he was wrong," said Montgomery, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish research group. "I don't think this stops until Putin feels either weapons system pain or economic pain that he cannot sustain." Civilians wearing military uniforms take part intraining by Ukraine's Third Separate Assault Brigade in the Kyiv region on July 12, 2025 AFP
NDTV
2 days ago
- Business
- NDTV
"Tough Guy, Fooled A Lot Of People": Trump Blasts Putin As Ukraine War Intensifies
Washington: Ever since his political rise a decade ago, Donald Trump has sung the praises of Vladimir Putin -- the Russian president was a "strong leader" who, perhaps more important, would often say "very good things" about him. With his announcement Monday of new arms for Ukraine via Europe and tariff threats on Russia, Trump's bromance with Putin has hit a new low -- but it may not have run its course. Trump, who had vowed to end the Ukraine war within a day of returning to the White House, said he was "disappointed" in Putin, who has kept attacking Ukraine as if the leaders' telephone conversations "didn't mean anything." "I go home, I tell the first lady, 'You know, I spoke to Vladimir today, we had a wonderful conversation. She said, 'Oh really? Another city was just hit.'" "I don't want to say he's an assassin, but he's a tough guy. It's been proven over the years. He's fooled a lot of people," Trump said. Trump quickly rejected that he was among those fooled and again insisted that the 2022 invasion of Ukraine was the fault of his predecessor Joe Biden, who championed a hard line on Russia. Brandishing his favorite weapon, Trump gave Russia 50 days to comply before facing 100 percent tariffs on countries that purchase from Russia, but stopped short of backing a bill before Congress for up to 500 percent tariffs. Russia's own trade with the United States has slowed down a trickle. Trump had "promised that he could get Putin to the negotiating table, and he has failed to do that," said Heather Conley, a former State Department policymaker on Russia now at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. His tariff threat "shows frustration that he has failed to do it, but I don't see it as a big policy change," she said. - The great deal-maker? - Trump stunned European allies on February 28 when he publicly berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, telling him he was ungrateful for billions of dollars in weapons under Biden. Trump then briefly held up new military and intelligence. For the US president, a transactional-minded businessman, Putin committed a key offense -- undermining Trump's self-image as a deal-maker. "For six months, President Trump tried to entice Putin to the table. The attacks have gone up, not down," Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally who has led the push for tough new sanctions on Russia, told CBS News show "Face The Nation." "One of the biggest miscalculations Putin has made is to play Trump," Graham said. Yet Trump has repeatedly shown a willingness to trust Putin, despite firm warnings from within the US government. Most famously, he sided with Putin over US intelligence at a 2018 news conference after they met in Helsinki after the Russian president denied meddling to support Trump in his first election. For observers of Putin, the longest-serving leader in Moscow since Stalin, there was never much chance he would accept compromise on Ukraine or work with the West. Putin has rued the demise of Russia's influence with the fall of the Soviet Union as a historic calamity and rejected the idea that Ukraine has its own historical identity. With Russia making small but steady gains on the battlefield and bringing in North Korean troops, Putin has put his entire country on war footing, Conley said. "The Kremlin has thrown everything into this," she said. "President Putin believes that this is just going to be a slow erosion of Ukraine's position and the West's position, and he will win this conflict on its own merits," she said. Mark Montgomery, a retired US rear admiral and Senate policy aide, said Putin believed in what has been referred to as TACO -- Trump Always Chickens Out. Putin "thought he could take it to the limit each time, and he found out he was wrong," said Montgomery, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish research group. "I don't think this stops until Putin feels either weapons system pain or economic pain that he cannot sustain." (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
"I Feel Like I Was Catfished": Women Are Raising The Alarm On This 1 "Outrageous" Word Men Are Using On Dating Apps
Back in January, the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative public policy think tank, released a survey that determined 52% of single heterosexual women are less likely to date a Donald Trump supporter — with only 36% of single heterosexual men saying voting for Trump would be a dealbreaker. And in the lead-up to Inauguration Day, Hily, a dating app with over 35 million worldwide users, released its own politics and dating study. After surveying 5,000 Gen Z and millennial Americans, Hily determined that 1 in 3 American women would decline a date over political differences. Similar to the AEI survey, Hily's study determined that only 1 in 10 American men would decline a date for the same reason. These results could very well explain the suspicious trend of heterosexual men misrepresenting their political leanings on dating apps: Specifically, they put 'moderate' on their profiles or act vague about their politics to increase their chances of matching with women who deliberately put 'no conservatives' in their own profiles. These so-called 'moderates' connect with liberal women, only for them to discover that their matches voted for Donald Trump in the last election (a dealbreaker for many). So why are people lying about their politics on dating apps in the first place? And how can daters spot the red flags behind these vague profiles before everyone's emotions take over? Here's what relationship experts have to say about this very 2025 dating problem. How 'Moderate' Became A Red Flag Ella,* a Los Angeles resident, said she's had nothing but frustration with 'moderates' on the apps. As she told HuffPost, Ella noticed that her 'large number of matches' with guys listed as 'moderate' on their Hinge dating profiles has grown significantly in recent months. But she now swipes left on all 'moderates': This is because more than once, after 'days and days of texting,' it turns out that these guys are 'really far-right, anti-feminist, etc,' she said. Ella's theory is that conservative men might need to lie about their political views – or else they won't get any dates in a liberal city like LA. Amanda*, creator of the 'Dating Is Dead' Instagram account, recently ended a two-year relationship with a man who also listed 'moderate' on his profile. 'I think that he was conservative more than moderate,' she said. 'I feel like I was catfished in that sense.' She said her now-ex-boyfriend began to show his true colors during the first 100 days of the second Trump administration: 'He was becoming more and more indoctrinated to the hard right.' Now, Amanda is questioning whether her ex's far-right attitude was there all along and she was 'just so blinded by love' — or if 'he was hiding who he was.' Since ending that relationship, Amanda said she is far more cautious around men who put 'moderate' in their dating profiles: 'I try and bring it up more gently than I did in the beginning,' she said, 'because there's a lot of dancing around who we voted for, so now I ask immediately.' This approach may result in some abbreviated dates, but it could also mean dodging a major bullet before you've even finished drinks: 'I actually went on a date the other night that lasted seven minutes,' Amanda said. Her date, after admitting that he voted for Donald Trump, brushed off her concerns about the president's second administration, claiming that 'nothing in America is really going to change,' which was all Amanda needed to know about this guy's values. Bolster Your Dating Boundaries From the chipping away of reproductive freedom to the U.S. government's pronatalist campaign, women's rights are under attack in 2025. So discovering that the 'moderate' guy you've matched with might actually be looking for a tradwife can be unsettling, to say the least. 'For a lot of women — especially women of color, queer women, women with trauma histories — conservative beliefs don't just feel like a difference of opinion,' said Cheryl Groskopf, an LA-based anxiety, trauma and attachment therapist. 'They feel like a threat. And if you've ever been dismissed, gaslit or harmed by someone who hides behind 'traditional values,' then this kind of dishonesty can feel like a violation (because it is).' 'It's also just draining to constantly have to explain yourself,' continued Groskopf. 'Think of the energy it takes to spend the first 30 minutes of a first date defending your humanity.' Amanda knows this sentiment well. She recounted how the seven-minute-date guy disregarded her concerns about women's bodily autonomy by pointing out that she lives in a blue state like New York. 'I was like, but it's not about me,' she said. 'It's about the girl in Mississippi or Texas who was, God forbid, sexually assaulted at 13 or who needs a D&C. [Men] have the same rights across all 50 states, and I don't. It is not really up for discussion. A gun has more rights than I do.' Bottom line? 'Women need these boundaries to protect their energy, their bodies and their sense of safety,' Groskopf said. 'They can absolutely name up-front what they need to feel safe.' Why Are Men Misrepresenting Themselves On The Apps? The numbers don't lie: If 52% of single women are less likely to date a Trump supporter, then it makes sense that some of those Trump supporters are attempting to game the system. 'It may be because they are trying to appeal to a broader range of women, and want to select answers that they perceive will get them past the initial screening,' observes Marisa T. Cohen, PhD, LMFT, a relationship expert with Hily. (Cohen also provided the data from Hily's pre-Inauguration Day survey.) 'They also may perceive that they are being inaccurately judged as a result of their political views, so they are trying to present themselves in a way that they think will allow them to match with more people,' she added. But these political mismatches sometimes occur simply because some people 'may judge their own views inaccurately,' Cohen said. 'They may think they are progressive compared to other people they are associated with, but don't necessarily hold progressive views.' Groskopf also points to a 'real-time cultural shift': Women are now asking questions like, 'Does this person feel emotionally safe to me?' Amanda echoes that, reiterating her need to know a man's political beliefs before getting involved. 'I would not feel safe in a room with a bunch of conservative men at this point,' she told HuffPost. While Groskopf doesn't believe all men are 'trying to maliciously deceive' their potential dates, she also observes that they're not all being honest and authentic, either. 'Many of them have just never had to think about how their political beliefs affect someone else's sense of emotional or physical safety,' Groskopf said. 'They weren't taught to connect their values to safety, or to see 'moderate' as vague instead of neutral. But what he's missing is that for a lot of women, that kind of vagueness is the red flag.' Trust Yourself — And Your Values If a person's political views are a dealbreaker for you, then it's imperative to tackle vague, 'moderate' profiles with a clear strategy: That starts with establishing your values, Cohen said. 'Additionally, going beyond surface-level questions to get to know a person and their worldview is important.' That being said, Cohen advises skepticism if a potential date 'consistently fails to expand on their own views.' For the sake of your emotional safety, Groskopf recommends asking simple questions like: 'What does 'moderate' mean to you?' 'How do your values show up in your day-to-day?' 'Where do you land on things that matter to me — like therapy, mental health, women's rights?' 'The way he responds will tell you a lot,' Groskopf said. 'Does he get curious? Defensive? Does he minimize your question? Does he give a clear answer or just talk in circles and try to sound chill? If he can't meet that moment with honesty, clarity, or even basic self-awareness — that is the red flag.' Groskopf also cautions against continued obscurity: 'If he says things like 'I'm pretty middle of the road' or 'I just don't like extremes' — but can't tell you what he does believe or values,' then that's a red flag too. Watch out for defensiveness or mockery as well: 'If he gets weird or low-key annoyed when you ask a totally normal question about values — or makes fun of people who care about things like social issues or emotional growth — that's your sign,' Groskopf said. 'A guy who's actually grounded doesn't get defensive over basic emotional curiosity.' Women deserve to know if someone they're dating voted against their interests from the get-go. If a guy you match with says 'moderate' on his profile, you are entitled to know his definition of the word before your emotions potentially take over. 'For you to tell me that you're a moderate, but it's OK to have unmarked police cars and people without badges sweeping people up in the streets? That's outrageous,' Amanda said of dubious 'moderate' men. 'Your non-negotiables are your non-negotiables,' Cohen said. 'If learning about a person's political leanings matters to you, ask!' *Names of those who shared their personal stories have been changed throughout this piece to preserve article originally appeared on HuffPost.
