The Ultimate?

Trump shoots another messenger!

Each day of Trump 2.0 seems worse than the day before. Today, August 1, was too much for me to take. It started with a monthly labor market report that was on the weak side. But then, in yet another fit of predictable rage, Trump shot the messenger — firing Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

I don't know Ms. McEntarfer, but I do know the BLS and what it stands for. Like most professional economists, I turn to the BLS website almost daily to extract data on virtually all aspects of the US economy — from labor market and price statistics to productivity and worker compensation. Data are available in extraordinary detail by industry and by product as well as at all levels of aggregation, from the minutia of micro data to broad macro trends in the overall economy. There is no statistical agency anywhere in the world that produces such a wealth of high-quality data. It is truly the gold standard of statistical measurement and reporting systems.

The BLS does far more than gather and disseminate statistics. It designs and oversees the scientifically designed surveys through which the raw data are processed and assembled for policy and public purposes. It manages a first-rate research program that aims at improving both the accuracy and the integrity of the US statistical measurement system. For example, in collaboration with leading academics in the 1990s, the BLS introduced tools to capture improvements in the quality of products and services, so-called hedonic price adjustments that make the critical distinction between inflation and innovation for innumerable items — from safer autos and miniaturized high-speed computers to smartphones and housing services.

Erika McEntarfer, who follows in a long line of well-qualified BLS commissioners, is a career civil servant who has spent over twenty years in various capacities as a labor economist working for a number of different agencies of the Federal government. She has a Ph.D. in economics from Virgina Tech, and her research has been widely published in major academic journals. There can be little doubt of her qualification and experience to lead Washington’s key statistical organization. Sadly, for President Trump, a self-proclaimed “genius” with an unfathomable disdain for expertise, all that means literally nothing.

Yes, the July labor market surveys that were released this morning were disappointing, portraying a US economy that was slipping below its recent trend. It wasn’t just last month’s weakness in nonfarm payrolls (+73,000) but a significant downward revision in the prior two months lowered our earlier assessment of employment levels by some 258,000 workers. Revisions are hardly duplicitous. They are the norm are for almost every statistical report that bases its first read on partial samples that are then expanded to include more respondents in the months that follow.

I have been a keen observer of monthly labor surveys for fifty years, first as a Fed staffer in the 1970s, then for several decades on Wall Street, and more recently as an academic. Today’s release fits a pattern I have seen many times in the past near business cycle turning points — a monthly shortfall accompanied by significant downward revisions of prior months. While there was no smoking gun of imminent recession, the July BLS report served the useful purpose of putting us on notice for such a possibility.

The only real smoking gun, other than heightened uncertainty associated with the own goal of Trump’s absurd tariff shock, is the President’s quick-finger social media habit. His postings have long been laced with conspiracy theories, including unsubstantiated assaults on the US intelligence system, vicious personal attacks on the Federal Reserve chair, and a visceral distaste for anything that occurred in the Obama and Biden Administrations, including apparently the appointment of Ms. McEntarfer as BLS commissioner. The lofty historic ideals of American presidential integrity are in tatters.

An oft-repeated tale of another fascist, Benito Mussolini, was his constant complaint about the inefficiency of Italian trains in the 1930s. As the story has it, he ordered the Italian train system, Ferrovie dello Stato, to adjust its published arrival schedules by one hour. Presto, the trains ran on time thereafter and Il Duce was beaming with pride! A neat trick that may not have been lost on America’s 47^th president.

The disgraceful firing of BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer should be seen for what it is — a fabricated act of desperation by an enraged politician. MAGA lionizes him for mastering the art of the deal. Today, the art of character assassination was on full display. What happens tomorrow?