Karl Rove: Trump’s economic 'gyrations' pushing America to the 'stage of exhaustion'

GOP strategist Karl Rove on December 1, 2015

On Friday morning, June 6, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its jobs report for May 2025 — and the news was mostly good. U.S. unemployment remained at 4.2 percent, and 139,000 new non-farm new payroll jobs were added.

But according to economists, there is a caveat: It remain to be seen what BLS figures will look like when the effects of President Donald Trump's steep new tariffs really kick in.

Trump has fluctuated a lot on tariffs, announcing new ones only to later pause them. And this is creating a lot of uncertainty on Wall Street.

During an early June appearance on the Wall Street Journal's podcast, veteran GOP strategist Karl Rove argued that Trump's tariff announcements are creating a feeling of "exhaustion" with the economy.

Rove told host Kim Strassel, "What is the whole mess around tariffs going to be like?.... We've just gotten so used to the gyrations, that each time there's 50 percent tariffs here and 25 percent tariffs there, and then we withdraw them — and then we institute them, and then we're going to put them on hold for a while, and then we're going to bring them back."

The GOP strategist continued, "All of that has gotten us so run so ragged and impacted the market so much, that I think we're finally to the stage of exhaustion. And people are starting to say, 'Well, I'm either going to stay on the sidelines, or I'm going to hope for the best.' But I'd say that a lot of incompletes, and necessarily so for the modern era,

Listen to the full Wall Street Journal podcast or read the transcript at this link (subscription required).