The Trump administration is at the cusp of something potentially transformative. If President Trump manages to unleash a new era of abundance of energy and ensure the leadership of the United States in artificial intelligence, economic profits will be deep. The lowest energy costs, faster innovation and the greatest industrial dynamism would provide a powerful tail wind for American productivity and growth.
But if the president continues to deal with disagreement, especially vital and independent agencies such as the Office of Labor Statistics and the Congress Budget Office, then Trump's second mandate could leave a dark brand in the country. He has been intimidating the federal reserve chair for months. The president and his proxies launched without scales against the CBO during the debate “One Big Beautiful Bill”. And now, Trump has fired the Head of the Statistics Office in response to his latest job report.
It is an ugly business. Some of these agencies are not just records of past economic activities; They are part of the infrastructure of a modern data based on data. From employment applicants and businessmen to housing owners and policy formulators, almost all consequent decisions in modern America depend on the credibility and quality of the numbers produced by these agencies. In an era formed by artificial intelligence, energy transformation and digitalized trade, the United States needs a modern, agile and protected statistical system of political interference.
Without a doubt, these agencies are far from perfect. I have been a strong critic of many of them. CBO's budgetary models are based on questionable assumptions and routinely underestimate the effects of the increase in debt on interest rates and investment. The office projected that the debt load would arrive 166% of GDP or higherAnd yet, its projection of annual inflation remains around 2% as if it is not affected by the growing debt. Such projections would be ridiculous, if they were not so dangerously disconnected from fiscal reality.
The Office of Labor Statistics also deserves criticism. The main unemployment rate masks the weakness of the labor market by overlooking the discouraged workers and those trapped in part -time jobs. The agency has also taken to adapt its methods to reflect the modern economy and has fought to capture the emergence of concert work, hybrid works and other emerging trends. It has resisted the use of administrative and private data in real time that could improve the speed and precision of their reports. Add to this a bureaucratic culture defined by the caution of the reform, the too rigid labor classifications and the methodological opacity, and it is easy to see why critics on both sides of the corridor drive change.
However, the problem has drawn the anger of the administration is the increasingly erratic employment estimates of the office followed by significant downward reviews, that the president and his allies see how evidence that the system is manipulated. It is not manipulated, but there is no doubt that it is broken. According John Podhoretz in Commentary magazineDuring the last 30 months “there have been 30 reviews … Twenty -five of them have been downward reviews, and five of them have been upward reviews.” And some of these reviews have been extremely large. A reason why job reports have become less reliable is the strong decrease in monthly response rates to the employer's survey, which have fallen from Around 60% prior to CO-COVID up to 43% today. This fall has made it significantly more difficult to measure employment.
Even so, defects are different from bad faith. While I am glad that the administration is calling attention to the need for reform in the office, it does so in the wrong way. First, fired the commissioner, As Trump did last weekIt will not fix the system. Second, like Dominic Pino said in National ReviewThe Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick recently dissolved the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee, an expert advisory group that was actively working on this precision problem. Composed of unpaid professionals from the Academy and Industry, the Committee had been helping the office and other statistical agencies to explore ways to improve data quality by increasing response rates, taking advantage of the lessons of the United Kingdom, Canada and Germany. Its elimination was not a cost savings movement, but a decision that undermines continuous efforts to strengthen the integrity of federal economic data, even when the administration publicly expresses frustration with the quality of those same data.
Shooting the head of the Office of Labor Statistics because the agency produced a revised number and, therefore, more precise, which said that an inconvenient truth will not help the administration either. The political replacement of the administration may not be taken seriously, especially if employment numbers improve.
Trump wants to restore American economic dynamism. But it must begin by restoring confidence in institutions that help measure and guide it. That means respecting their independence, even when your findings complicate your message. It also means looking for real reform, not political reprisals, when they fall short.
Veronique de Rugy He is a senior research member at the Mercatus Center of the George Mason University. This article was produced in collaboration with the creators Syndicate.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
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Administration attacks to independent economic agencies such as the Office of Labor Statistics and Congress Budget represent a dangerous pattern of treating disagreement as disloyalty that threatens the basis of the economy based on data from the United States.[1]. These agencies serve as a critical infrastructure for modern economic decision making, from employment search engines and businessmen to policy formulators, which makes their credibility essential for the functioning of the US economy.
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While these statistical agencies have legitimate defects that deserve criticism, including obsolete methodologies and assumptionable assumptions in budgetary projections, these deficiencies reflect institutional problems instead of deliberate manipulation[2]. The Office of Labor Statistics fights with the decrease in response rates and has taken to adapt to the economy of modern concerts, but data reviews are a normal characteristic of statistical reports designed to improve precision over time instead of evidence of systemic bias.
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The approach to the administration of dismissal officials and the elimination of advisory committees undermines genuine reform efforts and damages institutional credibility without addressing underlying problems[2]. Trump's dismissal to the BLS Commissioner and the dissolution of the BLS Secretary of Commerce, Lutnick, of the Federal Advisory Committee of Economic Statistics, represents political reprisals that hinder continuous efforts to improve the quality of data and response rates.
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Restoring American economic dynamism requires strengthening instead of attacking the institutions that measure and guide economic progress, which means that administration should respect the independence of the agency even when findings complicate political messaging. The approach must be to seek a substantive reform instead of a political interference, since it undermine public trust in economic data threatens both the credibility of the administration and the basis of the broader economy.
Different views on the subject
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The criticism of the Administration to the Office of Labor Statistics reflects legitimate concerns about the integrity of the data, particularly given the pattern of significant downward reviews that have occurred in recent employment reports[1]. Trump's defenders indicate the findings of Goldman Sachs that two -month reviews in recent jobs reports were the largest since 1968 outside a recession, which suggests genuine problems with the initial data collection processes and agency reports.
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The White House argues that its actions aim to guarantee precise data reports instead of suppressing unfavorable information, emphasizing the need for reliable economic statistics that reflect reality[1]. Trump assistants argue that their fundamental approach focuses on ensuring that any data provides a precise vision of economic conditions, and the administration claims to operate with complete transparency in its approach to government information.
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Economic experts recognize that the current statistical system faces real challenges that justify reform efforts, including response rates of the significantly reduced employers survey that have decreased from 60% prior to 43%[2]. These participation rates in decline make it substantially more difficult to measure employment, which contributes to reliability problems that have attracted administrative attention to the need for systematic improvements in data collection methods.
