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The sales drive by Florida-based Powerus – which announced a deal last month to bring aboard Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. – positions the company to potentially benefit from a war that their father began.

“These countries are under enormous pressure to buy from the sons of the president so he will do what they want,” said Richard Painter, a former chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush. “This is going to be the first family of a president to make a lot of money off war — a war he didn’t get the consent of Congress for.”

Powerus co-founder Brett Velicovich told The Associated Press that the company is making sales pitches that include drone demonstrations in several Gulf countries to show how its defensive drone interceptors could help them ward off Iranian attacks.

“Our team is doing many demos across the Middle East right now for our interceptors,” Velicovich said in an text exchange. “We have very incredible tech that can save lives.”

He declined to name the countries or give more details.

The Trump brothers’ deal with Powerus could give them sizable equity stakes. Their father, as commander in chief, launched the strikes with Israel against Iran over a month ago that began the war, the impetus for why these Gulf countries now need protection.

Powerus denied there were any conflicts when the Trump brothers’ stake was first announced. Velicovich emphasized its determination to help the U.S. catch up with Chinese and Russian drone makers and beat them.

“We are at war, my friend, we are in an arms race and America will lose if we don’t build fast,” said Velicovich, an Army veteran who had come under fire from the same Russian drones now being used by Iran. He added, “We should be thankful anyone is trying to invest in American manufacturing now. That idea transcends politics.”

The president’s oldest sons have expanded their business interests beyond hotels and golf courses since their father took office again. The companies they’ve invested in or been named advisers for — with equity stakes — run the gamut from cryptocurrency ventures to prediction markets to federal contractors making rocket parts and rare earth magnets.

This latest Trump venture has its sights on $1.1 billion set aside by the Pentagon to build up a U.S. manufacturing base for armed drones to fill a hole left when the Trump administration banned such imports from China.

The Trump Organization, where the two sons are executives, didn’t respond to a request for comment, but has dismissed claims of conflicts of interest in the past. The sons have said they didn’t get credit for their restraint in expanding their businesses in their father’s first term so have decided not to hold back much this time.

Asked about potential Powerus conflicts of interest specifically, Eric Trump sent AP a statement last month saying, “I am incredibly proud to invest in companies I believe in. Drones are clearly the wave of the future.”

Founded by U.S. Army Special Operations veterans about a year ago, Powerus makes drones for commercial uses, from spreading fertilizer to putting out forest fires. But it is bulking up fast to supply drones for military uses.

The company recently raised $60 million from investors and hopes to tap additional financing by doing a “reverse merger” with a Trump company listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange that owns a few golf courses in Florida. Such a merger allows a private business to quickly go public by taking over a company that already has publicly traded shares, shortening the process of filing paperwork and meeting various requirements of regular initial public offering.

According to a report from Dallas Fed economists on Tuesday, the breakeven rate of employment growth, or the number of net new jobs needed each month to keep the unemployment rate steady, actually went negative during the summer and fall of last year.

That means the economy can shed jobs without lifting the jobless rate, signaling an overall balanced labor market despite a lack of net hiring.

For years, monthly job gains of around 125,000-150,000 were considered necessary to absorb new entrants into the workforce. But with the collapse of net immigration into the U.S., the size of the labor force has stagnated.

Meanwhile, Trump’s trade war last year and war on Iran this year have created economic uncertainty that’s fueling a low-hire, low-fire job market. But a negative breakeven rate could make a no-hire, low-fire market sustainable.

Drawing on data in immigration court records and revised estimates of self-deportations, the Dallas Fed economists calculated that net unauthorized immigration was negative in the second half of 2025, averaging -55,000 per month.

As a result, total net unauthorized immigration for 2025 reached -548,000, about 50% more than the Congressional Budget Office’s latest projection of -365,000.

“Incorporating these updated estimates of net unauthorized immigration into our full model—allowing the labor force participation rate to vary over time—yields substantially lower break-even employment growth than previously estimated,” they wrote. “The breakeven rate peaked at about 250,000 jobs per month in 2023, fell to roughly 10,000 by July 2025, and declined to near zero thereafter, averaging about –3,000 jobs per month from August to December 2025, indicating, if anything, a modest net jobs loss over this period.”

Coinciding with the immigration crackdown, labor force participation has also been in a gradual decline. And Friday’s jobs report showed another drop in participation, helping the unemployment rate dip. The declines were concentrated among men in their 20s and 30s, women between ages 20 and 24, and men over 55.

While the Dallas Fed economists noted it’s difficult to single out factors for the decline, other research has shown that immigrant worker flows boosted employment one for one in recent years.

The report’s findings carry major implications for the Federal Reserve, which is charged with pursuing maximum employment and price stability.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has pointed to the unemployment rate as a key gauge of the labor market. Despite last year’s dive in average monthly payroll gains, the jobless rate has barely moved and remains at historically low levels, leading the Fed to proceed cautiously with interest rate cuts.

In fact, the 4.3% unemployment rate in March was little changed from the 4.2% rate in February 2025, Trump’s first full month back in the White House.

“Real-time data point to an important change in the U.S. labor market: The benchmark for evaluating payroll growth has moved significantly,” the Dallas Fed economists said. “As net outflows of unauthorized immigrants reduced employment growth in late 2025, payroll gains that might historically have signaled economic slack are now consistent with a balanced labor market.”