Trump Calls Government Shutdown an Economic Hit, Once Again Urges Rate Cut and Criticizes Powell

On February 20th, U.S. President Trump said he was considering a limited strike against Iran. (FXStreet)

**February 20** Local time this morning, 40 minutes before the release of U.S. GDP data, former President Donald Trump posted a message predicting the figures would fall short of expectations. He claimed, “U.S. GDP has dropped by at least 2 percentage points due to the Democratic-led government shutdown.” Forty minutes later, the U.S. released Q4 2025 GDP data that missed expectations sharply: the figure fell from 4.4% to 1.4%, a 300-basis-point decline. **January 10 (Prior Event)** U.S. President Donald Trump posted a chart of key unpublished U.S. nonfarm payroll data on his Truth Social platform one day ahead of the official release, sparking market and public scrutiny. --- Notes on U.S. style alignment: - Uses concise, active voice (standard for news alerts). - Replaces literal “article” with “message/post” (accurate for social media). - Simplifies “due to the Democratic government shutdown” to “Democratic-led government shutdown” (natural phrasing for partisan co

Feb. 20 — Kevin Hassett, White House National Economic Council Chair, said Friday’s GDP report was “a bit disappointing.”

**February 20, 2024** Aave core contributor BGD Labs announced Wednesday that its service agreement with the Aave DAO will not be renewed when it expires on April 1, 2026, and the firm will cease all contributions to the protocol. Over the past four years, BGD has led or contributed to the development of Aave v3, governance systems, and security-related infrastructure. However, the firm cited organizational direction shifts and the current governance environment as reasons for ending the collaboration. BGD noted it will wrap up ongoing work before the agreement expires and facilitate a seamless handover to the Aave community. It also proposed a two-month transitional security support period, which the community will need to approve via governance.

On February 20, OpenAI’s 200-person team is developing AI devices—including a smart speaker—per The Information.

February 20 — Per Onchain Lens monitoring, James Wynn opened a small 40x leveraged short position on BTC just 5 minutes ago. As of press time, the position size stands at 1.148 BTC.