There’s a moment in every economic cycle where the people who predicted disaster have to sit quietly and watch the numbers prove them wrong. Wednesday was that moment, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick showed up at a Breitbart News policy event to make sure nobody missed it.
130,000 non-farm jobs added in January. Economists expected 55,000. Some predicted zero. The actual number more than doubled the consensus forecast, unemployment dropped to 4.3%, and the growth came entirely from the private sector.
Entirely. Every single net job was private. The federal government shed 34,000 positions. State and local governments lost another 8,000. The economy didn’t grow despite the government shrinking — it grew because the government is shrinking.
Breitbart’s editor-in-chief Alex Marlow joked that the federal payroll contraction was their favorite part of the report. He wasn’t really joking.
Six Percent
Lutnick didn’t just celebrate the January numbers. He made a prediction that would make most economists choke on their morning coffee. He said he believes the first quarter of 2026 will see six percent GDP growth.
Six. For context, the United Kingdom is limping along below one percent. The European Union is barely treading water. Japan’s economy is actually shrinking. And Lutnick is projecting six percent growth for the largest economy on the planet.
That’s not optimism. That’s a dare. If it hits, it rewrites the economic conversation for the rest of the decade. If it misses, critics will have ammunition for months. Lutnick is betting big — and he’s betting on Trump’s trade strategy to deliver.
The Tariff Logic
Lutnick laid out the formula in plain English, which is refreshing from a Commerce Secretary considering most of them speak exclusively in wonk.
Cut imports by tariffing them. Drive exports by opening foreign markets and forcing their tariffs down. The two forces working together create domestic growth — American companies producing more, hiring more, exporting more, and competing less with artificially cheap foreign goods.
It’s not complicated. It’s also not universally popular, even within the Republican Party — as Wednesday’s House vote on Canada tariffs proved. But Lutnick isn’t hedging. He’s saying the tariff strategy is working, the numbers are proving it, and the trajectory is pointing straight up.
The Contrast
Lutnick spent time comparing the U.S. economy to its peers, and the comparison isn’t close. Europe is stagnant. The UK is barely alive. Japan is contracting. Meanwhile, America just posted a jobs report that doubled expectations while simultaneously reducing the size of its federal workforce to levels not seen since 1966.
Every economic rival is limping. America is sprinting. And the people who said tariffs would crash the economy, that DOGE layoffs would cause a recession, that shrinking the government would destroy the job market — they’re all watching the scoreboard and trying to figure out how to explain away what’s on it.
The Private Sector Story
Here’s the number that matters most and gets the least attention. 172,000 private sector jobs added in a single month, against a backdrop of 42,000 government jobs lost. The private sector didn’t just compensate for the government contraction — it overwhelmed it by a factor of four to one.
That’s the answer to every critic who said cutting the federal workforce would tank the economy. The economy didn’t tank. It accelerated. The private sector absorbed the shock and then some, because it turns out that when you stop piling regulations on businesses and start reducing the tax-funded competition for labor, companies hire people.
Who knew. Besides everyone who’s been saying it for forty years.
What Comes Next
Lutnick’s six percent prediction is the benchmark now. He put it on the record, at a public event, on camera. If Q1 delivers anything close to that number, Trump’s economic argument for the midterms becomes bulletproof. If it falls short, Democrats will play the clip on repeat.
But even without the six percent, the foundation is strong. Private sector growth. Shrinking government. Unemployment below expectations. A jobs report that embarrassed the forecasters. And a Commerce Secretary who looked into the camera and said, “Let’s grow like we’re the greatest economy in the world.”
No hedging. No footnotes. No “on the other hand.”
Just growth. The kind Washington forgot was possible until someone reminded them.