President Donald Trump’s decision to fire the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after a weaker-than-expected jobs report on Friday was an Orwellian broadside against his own government. Trump’s demand that 2+2=5 may be an attempt to shield himself politically from an impending economic recession. But it won’t alter economic reality, and it will also hurt his White House’s ability to respond should a recession come to pass.
Trump fired the BLS chief, Erika McEntarfer, just hours after a report showing that job growth was slowing, including downward revisions to recent months’ numbers. The president tried to frame the report as political sabotage by a Biden appointee who “faked the Jobs Numbers before the Election to try and boost Kamala’s chances of victory.” He said that she would be replaced “with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes.”
It’s a dark moment when the U.S. could be joining China as a country whose self-reported economic statistics are considered unreliable.
McEntarfer’s jobs reports weren’t a problem for Trump when they suggested the economy appeared resilient in the face of his trade wars, such as when the jobs report showed higher jobs growth than expected in June. But all of a sudden McEntarfer’s work became a problem the moment it showed that Trump’s economy looks weaker than expected. Trump had no evidence as he accused the highly credentialed employee of an independent agency of the extraordinary act of fabricating statistics.
Trump also blasted McEntarfer for the downward revisions of hiring in May and June as a sign of manipulation. It was another absurd bad faith accusation, as revisions are a routine part of jobs reports and reflect the incorporation of more comprehensive data.
Trump’s solution to his made-up problem is also a tell. White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said Sunday, “The president wants his own people there so that when we see the numbers, they’re more transparent and more reliable.” The White House is signaling that it’s looking for yes-men who could be expected to massage the data to make Trump happy.
It’s unclear whether this is something Trump will actually be able to achieve with his replacement. But the act of firing the BLS commissioner simply for reporting facts is in and of itself an ominous sign for the Trump administration. It raises questions of whether federal agencies’ data in the future will be independently reported or altered in order to satisfy Trump’s political considerations. When The Washington Post asked Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, whether she could trust the federal government’s jobs statistics after McEntarfer’s firing, she responded: “No! That’s the problem!”
It’s a dark moment when the United States could be joining China as a country whose self-reported economic statistics are considered unreliable and potentially subject to political meddling. That in turn would make it harder for U.S. businesses and investors to assess the state of the economy — and it could make them more conservative. And it would make it harder for federal policymakers to get a clear sense of the nature of the economy and what measures would be needed to respond to a crisis.
Trump’s attempt to bury unflattering information serves as a diversion from what could be a looming economic storm. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, says that he believes the “economy is on the precipice of recession” — and that Trump’s policies are squarely to blame:
It’s no mystery why the economy is struggling; blame increasing U.S. tariffs and highly restrictive immigration policy. The tariffs are cutting increasingly deeply into the profits of American companies and the purchasing power of American households. Fewer immigrant workers means a smaller economy.
Zandi also added that “any notion that the economic data misrepresents the reality of how the economy is performing is way off base.”
Trump might think that he’s positioning himself to weather the storm by casting his own government’s less flattering economic data as the product of political subterfuge. He could try to say that future indicators of a recession are made up and represent a deep state conspiracy and effectively prosecute the economic version of his big lie about the 2020 election. But that’s a lot harder to pull off when most Americans can see the economy in their daily lives.
Trump might’ve been able to lie his way back into the White House. But that won’t work with the economy. If there is a major economic downturn, most Americans will learn that one way or the other.
