Fox News corners CEO for trying to spin Trump's abysmal job numbers

The latest jobs report that showed a “striking” slowdown of economic growth left even Fox News Host Bill Hemmer questioning the economic optimism of a guest on his show, India Index's CEO Samir Kapadia.

Kapadia, who heads the business-to-business platform company, suggested that President Donald Trump’s newly-imposed tariffs, some of which came with pledges from several countries to invest in the United States, would largely offset the economic slump indicated in the new jobs report, which saw July post just 73,000 new jobs — and job number from June revised from 147,000 to just 14,000.

“If you calculate all that foreign direct investment that these countries have pledged, it's only going to increase economic activity in places like Texas, Iowa, Washington state, these are industries that have been waiting for that investment,” Kapadia said.

“It's going to create jobs and it's going to create output, so we're excited about it. At the end of the day, all of these sectors are going to benefit, so this might be a market moment, but it's certainly a much larger moment for the country's long-term direction, which we're all hoping for.”

In light of the jobs report that showed the slowest monthly job growth since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hemmer pushed Kapadia on whether he was being unrealistically optimistic.

“Are we being pollyannaish about this?” Hemmer asked. “Are you being pollyannaish about it, or do you really see the optimism behind all this?”

Kapadia stood his ground, citing what he considered to be an unprecedented level of foreign investments agreed upon in Trump’s trade deals.

Dubbed as “signing bonuses” by Trump, the investment pledges include a $550 billion investment from Japan, a $600 billion investment from the European Union, and a $350 billion investment from South Korea. Critics, however, have cast doubt on the so-called pledged investments, the details of which often differ between how Trump characterizes them, and how the pledging country does.

For instance, the agreement with Japan was described by Trump as a straight $550 billion investment into the United States at his own direction, whereas Japan’s chief negotiator Ryosei Akazawa described the agreement as a mix of investments and loans that would total $550 billion.

Hemmer, in his own show of optimism, ended the segment with a hopeful phrase: “fingers crossed.”

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