President Donald Trump threatened to halt trade with countries where the United States runs a deficit unless the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates, after August payroll growth far exceeded expectations. The economy added 162,000 jobs, nearly triple the 56,000 consensus forecast, while July’s reported loss of 23,000 was revised to a gain of 21,000. Food services and local-government education accounted for about 62% of August’s headline increase. The report pushed CME FedWatch’s probability of a rate hike to 3.75%-4% at the Sept. 16 FOMC meeting to 60.2%, from 49.4% on Thursday, while the probability of a cut fell to 0.0%. The 2-year Treasury yield rose to 4.4%. The stronger labor data removed employment weakness as a clear argument against tighter policy, leaving inflation as the key test before the meeting. Headline PCE inflation was 3.7% year over year in July and core PCE was 3.3%, compared with the Federal Reserve’s 2% goal. Trump’s comments followed July data showing the U.S. goods-and-services deficit widened 24.4% to $88.6 billion, including shortfalls with Mexico, Vietnam, China and the European Union. The deficit was partly linked to spending on AI data centers, with computer imports up 25% and semiconductor imports up 10% from June to July. The August report also showed construction employment rising by 22,000 jobs, with some positions tied to data-center development. The Sept. 11 inflation report is now the main scheduled data point before the FOMC decision.