WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) -- In a prime-time national address Wednesday night, U.S. President Donald Trump highlighted the economic achievements of the first year of his second term even as economic data and polls painted a less rosy picture.
In the roughly 20-minute speech, Trump lashed out at the previous administration's policies and claimed that his leadership has restored U.S. strength and revitalized the economy.
"We are bringing our economy back from the brink of ruin," Trump said, claiming that he is bringing high prices down "very fast."
"There are more people working today than at any time in American history, and 100 percent of all jobs created since I took office have been in the private sector," said Trump.
The president also defended his tariff policies, saying he has secured trillions of dollars in investment in the United States, and "much of this success has been accomplished by tariffs."
Trump also lauded the massive tax and spending bill approved by Congress in early July. "Next year, you will also see the results of the largest tax cuts in American history that were really accomplished through our great, Big Beautiful Bill," he said.
Despite Trump's claims of success, economic data and public opinion polls suggest a less optimistic outlook.
The jobless rate jumped to 4.6 percent in November, a four-year high, according to data released Tuesday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This indicates that the Trump administration has "taken its eye off the most important goal, which is improving the economy," Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Darrell West told Xinhua.
"Unemployment is rising and inflation remains high. It is a bad combination for someone who campaigned on those issues and promised he would focus on them from day one," West said.
Paul Krugman, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, wrote in a blog published earlier Wednesday that "While it's too soon to declare that we're in a recession, the data are at least pre-recessionary: that is, the numbers are weak enough that we should be seriously worried that a recession is coming. And that's a state of affairs completely at odds with Trump's rose-colored -- spray-tanned? -- picture."
In a recent report, NBC News noted that Trump's approval has inched down in 2025 amid concern about the economy as "Americans remain worried about inflation and costs after Trump's campaign promises to ease those anxieties."
American adults largely disapprove of Trump's job performance, with his approval rating at 42 percent in the new poll, a drop of 3 points over the course of four polls since April.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll published Tuesday showed that Trump's approval rating slips to 39 percent, down from 41 percent earlier in December and within a point of the 38 percent reading from mid-November, Trump's lowest rating this year.
An opinion published on The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday argued that "Donald Trump's affordability failures will cost him," as the economy has gone from one of the president's best issues with American voters to one of his worst. ■
