Inflation and gross domestic product are both down while investment in the United States surges. And we talk to Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum about how the Trump administration is unleashing energy development one hundred days into the term.
It’s Thursday, May 1, and this is the news you need to know to start your day.
Morning Wire is now available on video! You can watch today’s episode below:
If you’d rather listen to the show, it’s still available in audio wherever you get your podcasts. Today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below:
Investments Surge, GDP Slips
Topline: American investment is surging despite turmoil around Trump’s tariffs – and the GDP is slightly slipping.
The GDP shrank by 0.3% in the first quarter of 2025, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped about 200 points in response to that news. But if we dig into the numbers the data is mixed – and there are actually some significant positives. During a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Trump and other administration officials challenged the media’s narrative about the economy, arguing that they are turning Biden’s economy around and that “core GDP” is on the rise.
“I was very against everything Biden was doing in terms of the economy,” Trump said. “ But we took over his mess in so many different ways… despite what we were handed we turned them around.”
White House trade advisor Peter Navarro broke down how the administration crunched the numbers. He said that a surge in imports and DOGE slashing government waste make the GDP look much lower on paper. “The markets need to look below the surface of that,” Navarro said. “We had a 22% increase in domestic investments. That is off the charts.”
In that same cabinet meeting, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick laid out details about how another semiconductor company, which is the main chip supplier for Apple, is building a major manufacturing plant in Arizona. Trump also said he has gotten $8 trillion in new investments in the United States since taking office.
Inflation slowed to its lowest rate since September, and consumer spending increased by $135 billion, or 0.7%. Much of that was Americans buying cars and other big-ticket items, partly to get ahead of Trump’s tariffs. Meanwhile, prices were static in March, and personal incomes rose by $116.8 billion, or 0.5%.
Drill Baby Drill
Topline: The Trump Administration is looking to break America’s reliance on Chinese natural resources by expanding domestic mining and drilling.
The Department of the Interior oversees billions of acres of federal lands and waters and has the power to open up new land for mining and drilling operations. Under the Trump administration, it’s doing just that.
This month, when China announced a ban on the export of several rare earth minerals, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced that he would reverse President Biden’s so-called “war on mining” to ensure the United States could begin producing those minerals on its own.
“Obama, Biden, you know, their whole approach was we’re gonna shut down mining, we’re gonna shut down oil and gas development,” Burgum told The Daily Wire. “They really, I’m gonna say, crushed the mining industry, both the extraction of these resources, but also the processing of that…China was happy to have the rest of the Western world stop mining so that they could take control of the markets around these critical minerals, which we need for defense, for technology, for electronics, really for everything today in modern life depends on it. So now in the United States, we’ve gotta get back in the game.”
Because President Trump made an emergency energy declaration, Secretary Burgum, who’s also the Chair of the National Energy Dominance Council, was able to bypass regulations that typically result in years-long delays on new mining projects. Now, they’ll be approved within two weeks. Burgum told the Daily Wire that overregulation of the mining industry has driven business out of the U.S. — forcing us to be more reliant on countries like China. Burgum says that bringing mining back to the United States will be better for the global environment.
“We do it cleaner, better, safer, smarter and healthier here in the U.S. because when we attack these resource-based industries, we don’t reduce the demand. We just shift the supply overseas and they shift it to China, who might be extracting this from in the DRC in the middle of Africa. And they’re doing it without reclamation. They’re doing it with, sometimes, slave labor, prisoner labor. They’re doing it with no emissions control on what they’re doing. So it’s worse for the global environment. It helps our adversaries, it hurts our economy, and it’s horrible for national security.”
Trade War Hits U.S. Farmers
Topline: President Trump continues to tout his trade policies as China makes quiet concessions, but also cancels significant U.S. agricultural orders.
A report from Reuters published Wednesday says that China has created a list of U.S.-made products that will be exempt from its retaliatory 125% tariffs, in addition to other exemptions it has already made on pharmaceuticals, microchips, and aircraft engines. Behind the scenes, Beijing is apparently privately notifying companies about these latest exemptions – that’s obviously to preserve this posture that China will fight Trump on tariffs to the end.
Trump has said he’s in trade talks with China and that President Xi recently called him. China has denied it and is publicly putting on a bold face.
“Bowing to a bully is like drinking poison to quench thirst. It only deepens the crisis.” A widely disseminated Chinese propaganda video said earlier this week. “ Make no mistake, the U.S. will keep flip-flopping and playing hardball. But China will stand firm, no matter how hard the wind blows, no matter how clouds rage.”
Last week, China made its largest cancellation of pork orders in five years, halting about 12,000 tons of U.S. pork. The nation has also significantly reduced its soybean order by 97% compared to two weeks ago. For some context, U.S. farmers export more than $176 billion in agricultural products a year. Nearly 10% of that is soybeans and pork for China.
[#item_full_content]
[[{“value”:”
Inflation and gross domestic product are both down while investment in the United States surges. And we talk to Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum about how the Trump administration is unleashing energy development one hundred days into the term.
It’s Thursday, May 1, and this is the news you need to know to start your day.
Morning Wire is now available on video! You can watch today’s episode below:
If you’d rather listen to the show, it’s still available in audio wherever you get your podcasts. Today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below:
Investments Surge, GDP Slips
Topline: American investment is surging despite turmoil around Trump’s tariffs – and the GDP is slightly slipping.
The GDP shrank by 0.3% in the first quarter of 2025, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped about 200 points in response to that news. But if we dig into the numbers the data is mixed – and there are actually some significant positives. During a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Trump and other administration officials challenged the media’s narrative about the economy, arguing that they are turning Biden’s economy around and that “core GDP” is on the rise.
“I was very against everything Biden was doing in terms of the economy,” Trump said. “ But we took over his mess in so many different ways… despite what we were handed we turned them around.”
White House trade advisor Peter Navarro broke down how the administration crunched the numbers. He said that a surge in imports and DOGE slashing government waste make the GDP look much lower on paper. “The markets need to look below the surface of that,” Navarro said. “We had a 22% increase in domestic investments. That is off the charts.”
In that same cabinet meeting, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick laid out details about how another semiconductor company, which is the main chip supplier for Apple, is building a major manufacturing plant in Arizona. Trump also said he has gotten $8 trillion in new investments in the United States since taking office.
Inflation slowed to its lowest rate since September, and consumer spending increased by $135 billion, or 0.7%. Much of that was Americans buying cars and other big-ticket items, partly to get ahead of Trump’s tariffs. Meanwhile, prices were static in March, and personal incomes rose by $116.8 billion, or 0.5%.
Drill Baby Drill
Topline: The Trump Administration is looking to break America’s reliance on Chinese natural resources by expanding domestic mining and drilling.
The Department of the Interior oversees billions of acres of federal lands and waters and has the power to open up new land for mining and drilling operations. Under the Trump administration, it’s doing just that.
This month, when China announced a ban on the export of several rare earth minerals, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced that he would reverse President Biden’s so-called “war on mining” to ensure the United States could begin producing those minerals on its own.
“Obama, Biden, you know, their whole approach was we’re gonna shut down mining, we’re gonna shut down oil and gas development,” Burgum told The Daily Wire. “They really, I’m gonna say, crushed the mining industry, both the extraction of these resources, but also the processing of that…China was happy to have the rest of the Western world stop mining so that they could take control of the markets around these critical minerals, which we need for defense, for technology, for electronics, really for everything today in modern life depends on it. So now in the United States, we’ve gotta get back in the game.”
Because President Trump made an emergency energy declaration, Secretary Burgum, who’s also the Chair of the National Energy Dominance Council, was able to bypass regulations that typically result in years-long delays on new mining projects. Now, they’ll be approved within two weeks. Burgum told the Daily Wire that overregulation of the mining industry has driven business out of the U.S. — forcing us to be more reliant on countries like China. Burgum says that bringing mining back to the United States will be better for the global environment.
“We do it cleaner, better, safer, smarter and healthier here in the U.S. because when we attack these resource-based industries, we don’t reduce the demand. We just shift the supply overseas and they shift it to China, who might be extracting this from in the DRC in the middle of Africa. And they’re doing it without reclamation. They’re doing it with, sometimes, slave labor, prisoner labor. They’re doing it with no emissions control on what they’re doing. So it’s worse for the global environment. It helps our adversaries, it hurts our economy, and it’s horrible for national security.”
Trade War Hits U.S. Farmers
Topline: President Trump continues to tout his trade policies as China makes quiet concessions, but also cancels significant U.S. agricultural orders.
A report from Reuters published Wednesday says that China has created a list of U.S.-made products that will be exempt from its retaliatory 125% tariffs, in addition to other exemptions it has already made on pharmaceuticals, microchips, and aircraft engines. Behind the scenes, Beijing is apparently privately notifying companies about these latest exemptions – that’s obviously to preserve this posture that China will fight Trump on tariffs to the end.
Trump has said he’s in trade talks with China and that President Xi recently called him. China has denied it and is publicly putting on a bold face.
“Bowing to a bully is like drinking poison to quench thirst. It only deepens the crisis.” A widely disseminated Chinese propaganda video said earlier this week. “ Make no mistake, the U.S. will keep flip-flopping and playing hardball. But China will stand firm, no matter how hard the wind blows, no matter how clouds rage.”
Last week, China made its largest cancellation of pork orders in five years, halting about 12,000 tons of U.S. pork. The nation has also significantly reduced its soybean order by 97% compared to two weeks ago. For some context, U.S. farmers export more than $176 billion in agricultural products a year. Nearly 10% of that is soybeans and pork for China.
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