Traffic fatalities dropped dramatically in the first half of this year — even as Americans spent more time on the road, according to new data the National Safety Council (NSC) released Monday.

About 18,720 people died in traffic crashes from January to June, nearly 13 percent fewer than during the same period in 2024, the researchers found.

“This decrease in traffic deaths represents tremendous progress and shows what’s possible when states and communities commit to proven safety strategies,” NSC executive vice president Mark Chung said in a news release. “This success demonstrates that when we work together using evidence-based solutions, we can save lives and make all road users safer.”

Researchers noted that while fatalities decreased, the number of miles that Americans drove over the compared periods increased by almost 1 percent.

Ten states — California, Connecticut, Mississippi, Alaska, Delaware, Alabama, Kentucky, Vermont, Maryland and Minnesota — saw decreases of more than 20 percent in traffic fatalities, as did the District of Columbia.

Four states saw fatalities jump by 20 percent or more: Hawaii, Oklahoma, Kansas and West Virginia, the report found.

NSC cited the states’ embrace of the Federal Highway Administration’s Safe System Approach as a major factor in the decline. It urged the U.S. Transportation Department to develop and push a comprehensive safety plan to curb risky driving behaviors nationwide.

Safe System Approach leans heavily on mitigating fatalities when crashes occur.

“We’re seeing the results of states and localities implementing the Safe System Approach – focusing on safer roads, safer speeds, safer vehicles, safer people and better post-crash care,” Chung said.

President Trump’s international economic policies crashed into each over the weekend, when hundreds of South Korea workers were arrested by U.S. immigration officials at a Hyundai factory in Georgia only weeks after the two countries announced a new trade arrangement that was hailed by both sides.

Trump’s immigration crackdown has largely focused on the U.S. southern border and has taken place separately from his ongoing reset of international trade. But the collision of his two agendas Saturday sparked tensions.

The 300 South Korean workers who were detained in the immigration raid are likely to leave the U.S. without being formally deported after official consultations between Seoul and Washington, the Yonhap news agency reported Monday, citing a South Korean foreign ministry official.

South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said on Saturday he was considering a visit to the U.S. to discuss the arrests made at the battery plant in Ellabell, Ga.

“We are deeply concerned and feel a heavy sense of responsibility over the arrests of our nationals,” Cho said during an emergency meeting, according to Yonhap. “We will discuss sending a senior foreign ministry official to the site without delay, and, if necessary, I will personally travel to Washington.”

While trying to boost domestic production and create manufacturing jobs, the White House has also been trying to get foreign companies to invest more in the U.S. The weekend raid at the battery plant appeared to some policy specialists as the administration tripping over its own objectives.

“There probably wasn’t any coordination in terms of how to address the part where we want to revive American manufacturing, and get foreign investors to invest billions in the U.S., but then also provide a process that also allows workers to come in to set up the factory,” Andrew Yeo, senior fellow and Korea chair with the Brookings Institution, told The Hill.

South Korean companies have been investing heavily in the U.S. in recent years, with Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix putting capital into semiconductor production, and SK On Co. and Samsung SDI building battery factories with American carmakers GM and Ford.

The immigration raid at the Hyundai-LG facility over the weekend has sent shivers through Korean-American businesses and sparked concerns that joint ventures between the two countries are being put on notice. Korean companies are involved in numerous sectors of U.S. heavy industry, including shipbuilding, power equipment and steel production.

“There are growing concerns in the business community that major Korean investment projects in the U.S. could be affected,” the Korean Economic Daily, a business trade publication, reported Monday.

The U.S. and South Korea announced a $350 billion joint economic initiative at the end of July, premised on the reduction of U.S. tariffs on Korean imports to 15 percent from 25 percent.

The new fund set up by the agreement “will help Korean companies actively enter the U.S. market in industries where we have strengths,” President Lee Jae Myung said in a social media post, mentioning the fields of shipbuilding, semiconductors, energy, biotechnology and batteries.

While the new initiative lacked many specifics, the weekend immigration raid puts it in a new light, drawing concern from former officials about the scale of South Korean investment in the U.S.

“I’m really speechless and furious,” Choi Jong-gun, South Korea’s former vice foreign minister, told The Washington Post on Monday. “We spend a lot of money in the United States and we get slapped in the face.”

Trump’s sprawling immigration crackdown is expected to result in a net outflow of about 205,000 people from the U.S. this year, according to an estimate from the American Enterprise Institute, a drop that is likely already showing up in labor data and is set to have lasting economic effects. 

The U.S. added just 22,000 jobs in August, bringing the three-month average down to 29,000 new jobs created per month. The unemployment rate also ticked up last month from 4.2 percent to 4.3 percent, as jobseekers outnumbered available positions by around 200,000.

Manufacturing jobs in the U.S. have been declining in recent months, despite the administration’s stated efforts to increase them. Jobs in the sector fell by 12,000 in August after dropping by 2,000 in July and 17,000 in June. Since last year, manufacturing employment has fallen by 40,000 positions, continuing a longer term trend.

Economists think the reduction in immigration is going to change the definition of “full employment,” which is what the Federal Reserve considers when it tweaks the overnight interbank interest rate.

“Potential employment growth, meaning employment growth when the labor market is operating sustainably at ‘full employment,’ could be between 10,000 and 40,000 jobs a month in the second half of 2025 (down from 140,000 to 180,000 in 2024), and potential job growth could turn negative in the second half of Trump’s term,” economist Wendy Edelberg and others wrote for AEI in July.

The immigration raid also injects new uncertainty into the policy environment, something that businesses have been frequently complaining about during the stop-and-start delivery of Trump’s new tariff regime.

“With all these challenges and obstacles, it’s really hard to make any predictions and forecasts in terms of how well your business is going to grow in the U.S.” Brookings’ Yeo said. “That’s something that I think the South Koreans will be thinking about.”

A federal appeals court panel on Monday ruled against Democratic attorneys general who sued the Trump administration over its mass firings of probationary employees, finding the states do not have standing to bring the legal challenge.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in a 2-1 decision vacated a lower court’s decision that indefinitely barred the Trump administration from terminating thousands of probationary employees in Washington, D.C., and the 19 states that sued.

Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, an appointee of President Reagan, wrote for the majority that to hold that standing exists for the states would “upset, indeed revolutionize, the balance inherent in dual sovereignty,” noting that the case concerns the federal government’s compliance with federal employment laws governing federal employees’ terminations.

“We acknowledge that the abrupt and indiscriminate dismissal of the probationary employees here exacted all-too-human costs upon those affected,” Wilkinson wrote. “But this real impact on the employees, who are not parties here, cannot govern our review.”

The appeals court directed the lower court to dismiss the case.

The 20 Democratic attorneys general filed suit in March after the administration fired thousands of employees in their probationary status, meaning those who were either hired or promoted within the past year or two and have fewer job protections than other federal workers. 

The cuts came as part of the administration’s efforts to slim down the federal bureaucracy, spearheaded by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

The states argued that the administration failed to follow “reduction in force” procedures mandated under federal regulations, such as providing 60 days’ notice to the workers affected by the firings.

U.S. District Judge James Bredar, an appointee of President Obama, first ordered officials to temporarily reinstate probationary employees fired at 18 agencies, no matter where they physically worked, but in April, added two agencies and limited those reinstatements to workers whose “duty station” falls within the plaintiff states and D.C.

“Only states have sued here, and only to vindicate their interests as states,” Bredar wrote in the latter ruling. “They are not proxies for the workers.”

In a dissenting opinion of Monday’s ruling, Judge DeAndrea Gist said she would have kept Bredar’s “well-reasoned” preliminary injunction intact.

“As explained above and in great detail by the district court, nowhere have the States asked to micromanage the Government,” wrote Gist, an appointee of former President Biden. “They ask merely for what they are due—notice under the statutes and regulations.”