Trump’s own former statistics chief denounces move as ‘groundless’ and ‘dangerous’. Key US politics stories from Friday 1 August at a glance
After Donald Trump ordered the firing of a federal government official in charge of labor statistics, experts and opposition politicians have expressed alarm that the “credibility” of US economic data was at risk.
The US president claimed without evidence that Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of labor statistics, had “rigged” job numbers “in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad”, after data showed jobs growth stalled this summer, prompting accusations that the president was “firing the messenger”.
Bill Beach, a former Heritage Foundation economist who was picked by Trump in 2018 to oversee labor statistics, denounced what he called the “totally groundless firing”.
“Politicizing economic statistics is a self-defeating act,” said Michael Madowitz, the principal economist at the Roosevelt Institute’s Roosevelt Forward, who added that “credibility is far easier to lose than rebuild, and the credibility of America’s economic data is the foundation on which we’ve built the strongest economy in the world”.
