This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

The American economy, under the leadership of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, added only 142,000 jobs in August, far below expectations.

It was the next step in what analysts have called a "downward" trend.

Then unemployment also was reported at 4.2%, which while it is lower than the 9.1% seen earlier under the Biden-Harris regime which has left Americans paying some 21% more for the same lifestyle as when President Donald Trump was in office, still is far higher than when Trump turned the economy over to the Democrats.

Now a report in the Washington Examiner notes that America, under Biden and Harris, has been hit with a third strike: a massive plunge in consumer confidence.

"The Conference Board's consumer confidence index fell to 98.7 in September, down from 105.6 the month before, the group announced on Tuesday," the report said, calling it "another warning signal for Vice President Kamala Harris, who has been working to convince voters she is the right choice for president."

The report said the plunge was the biggest slide month-to-month since August 2021 for the numbers that assess consumers' opinions regarding the labor market and business conditions.

The report continued, "The expectations index, which is derived from consumers' short-term outlook for business, income, and labor market conditions, declined by 4.6 points to 81.7. If the index is below 80, it typically signals a recession ahead, according to the Conference Board."

Dana Peterson, economist for the board, said, "Consumer confidence dropped in September to near the bottom of the narrow range that has prevailed over the past two years. September's decline was the largest since August 2021 and all five components of the Index deteriorated. Consumers' assessments of current business conditions turned negative while views of the current labor market situation softened further."

A report from the Daily Caller News Foundation also noted that Art Laffer, an economist who worked with President Ronald Reagan, confirmed the rise in unemployment rates can be traced to the "bad policies," and that Trump's economic plan for his presidency would bring back growth.

Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell when he said only days ago the organization was lowering its federal funds rate by 0.5% confirmed that the Biden-Harris open borders agenda was allowing an "influx" across the border that was helping push unemployment rates up.

Laffer pointed out the problem with Powell's claims, the report said, citing a lack in growth in employment.

"If unemployment went up because of illegal immigrants coming in, wouldn't employment have gone up as well because they've come in — some of them get jobs, some of them don't in the labor force, but when you look at employment growth, it's been declining dramatically … and that's really the problem," Laffer said.

"The unemployment rate — and Trump is completely right, by the way, in this. The unemployment rate increases [are] because of bad policies not because of illegal immigrants. Their tax policies, their spending policies, have led to a decline in the rate of growth of the economy and lessened employment. And that's really a serious problem."

He suggested Trump's plans would "lead to enormous expansion of employment. I mean, you look at some of these things on the tips — no taxes on tips. You remove taxes from overtime, those are all marginal tax rate reductions that would have an enormous impact on jobs output. Can you imagine how many more service employees you'd find if you didn't get taxes on tips? Or how [much] overtime work we'd get — how much more we'd get if we didn't have taxes on overtime work?"