Hello?
Hello, guys.
Very quick because I know it's hot.
Yeah, I just have a couple seconds. It's a little warm today.
Kevin, if prices do end up going up as a result of these tariffs, will the president consider changing course?
The president speaking -- oh, I'm sorry. We've been following the data closely. The import prices have dropped dramatically since the tariffs started, which is a sign that, as President Trump suggested, that foreign countries and foreign companies are going to bear a lot of the tariff. And we're highly confident that, if you looked at the GDP release today, that real wages grew at 3 percent -- a 3 percent rate is a strikingly high rate.
And that means that people have more money in their pockets than the price increases that they're seeing and that's a good sign. I think that that's what we should expect to see in the future as well.
Most of the tariffs haven't been put into place yet, right?
We have $127 billion in revenue that we raised already, and inflation is down. As you saw, the GDP release today is CPI inflation -- or PCE inflation is at 2.1 percent.
How did the issues South Korea and the United States, as they're talking today. Do you think they conclude this time, or you just go through to August 1st, remain the 25 percent?
There's a lot of movement with South Korea. I know that -- Robin, I'm meeting tomorrow with the South Koreans. So, we'll have more tomorrow the next day to talk about that.
Do you expect the fed chair to lower rates today, are you expecting anything from --
We respect the independence of the fed. We'll look forward to seeing what their decision is today.
Has the president indicated to you at any point he may name a potential successor to Powell? Has he indicated that?
He's asked Treasury Secretary Bessent to lead a thorough process to go through all the best candidates and then present the president with options.
And the New York Times review -- This morning Chuck Schumer -- he said that the GDP growth numbers are a mirage, he said some dark numbers lurk below the surface. He was pointing to business investment numbers that came out. Can you respond to that?
Well, I'm actually impressed that Mr. Schumer would be looking through the nuances of the numbers. If he had been doing that in the previous administration, he might have noticed that almost all of the growth in jobs was for government employees, and almost all of the growth of GDP was for government spending.
Government spending dropped enormously. We've reduced government employment by about 70,000 people and we've got 3 percent growth. The one bit of news in today's release that was a little bit different than all the other top lines was that there was a decline in capital formation. But that was for the manufacturing facilities that are going to be able to be expensed because we passed the Big, Beautiful Bill.
And so, our expectation is that what happened is that people held up on construction because they wanted to make sure they could expense it after the bill was passed. So, thank you. I've got to run now. So, thank you, guys. That's it, I'm sorry.
Thank you, Kevin.