The Trump Administration's “War on Government Statistics”

The Trump Administration is flooding the airwaves with such a constant flow of “information” that it would not be surprising that a desperate reader did not remember the March Bloomberg headline: “The War on Government Statistics Has Quietly Begun” [3/11]. Bloomberg is not in the least a left-leaning media source. Nor does it publish conspiracy theories. Yet the article worries out loud:

In a time of great economic uncertainty, President Donald Trump’s administration quietly took a step last week that could create even more: Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick disbanded the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee.

It leaves the reader with a worrisome observation:

Reduced transparency in official statistics is perhaps the most troubling aspect of disbanding FESAC. Cutting off agency staff from external advisers creates an environment where political interference could occur much more easily — and go undetected.

The committee also advised the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and other U.S. Commerce Department statistical bureaus.

There were many more reports on the subject with revealing headlines such as the following:

• “‘Bad sign’: Purge of data experts raises alarms over economic reports” [3/21/25](Poltico)

• “Experts worry about degradation of economic data after advisory committees disbanded” [3/13/25](Marketplace)

The latter article included the tidbit that the Bureau of Economic Analysis Advisory Committee had also been disbanded.

The Week published a piece just this week: “Economists fear US inflation data less reliable” [6/5]. 'In an email this week to economists who had raised concerns about "quirks" in the April CPI report,' we learn, the BLS revealed that, on top of disbanding the expert advisory/oversight groups, 'it had indefinitely "reduced" its data collection "due to a staffing shortage in certain CPI cities"' (a fine excuse).

The first CPI inflation reports, to date, from the Trump Administration covered the recent December and January months under the Biden Administration. The numbers were surprisingly high. The inflation rates for February through April — months under the Trump Administration — either came in below expectations (February) or surprisingly below expectations (March, April). Following the April report, expert economists contacted the BLS about euphemistically described quirks — inconsistencies — in the data. The reply they received was that this was going to be the new methodology for some indefinite period of time.

The Federal Reserve sampling system, called “the Beige Book,” — protected from the Trump Administration control for the moment — showed, instead, notable increases in selling price of the range of products surveyed. “The pace of selling price increases eased somewhat [in May] butremained moderate.... While some firms said they were absorbingtariff-induced cost increases, most reported that they were passingthrough some or all of such cost increases to their customers byraising prices.” Specific numbers are not given but the picture seems to indicate inflation at a moderately increasing rate.

The Administration's labor statistics have also been surprisingly resilient. In spite of major government layoffs and rapidly rising private sector layoffs the recent BLS jobs report showed a surprising increase of 177,000 in new hires. Surprisingly, the unemployment rate remained 4.2%.

Over the same period, the highly respected ADP [Automatic Data Processing, Inc.] jobs data saw an altogether different trend in its numbers. According to CNBC [6/4]:

Private sector job creation slowed to a near standstill in May, hitting its lowest level in more than two years as signs emerged of a weakening labor market, payrolls processing firm ADP reported Wednesday.

Payrolls increased just 37,000 for the month, below the downwardly revised 60,000 in April and the Dow Jones forecast for 110,000. It was the lowest monthly job total from the ADP count since March 2023.

Even Fox Business finds itself having to report private aggregator data:

Challenger, Gray & Christmas on Thursday released a report that said there were 93,816 job cuts announced by U.S. employers in May. That amounts to an increase of 47% from 63,816 announced last May, while last month's figure was down 12% from 105,441 cuts in April.

That brings the total number of job cuts announced this year to 696,309 — an increase of 80% from the 385,859 jobs cut in the first five months of 2024. This year's total is just 65,049 job cuts away from matching the 2024 annual total.

It seems that the most highly respected private data aggregators show a labor market already plunging, on the brink of free fall. Government numbers, on the other hand, show a surprisingly (even incredibly) healthy labor market. Government numbers show the inflation rate going down. The Fed shows prices going up and retailers actively passing along tariff-induced price increases to their customers.

Meanwhile, Fox (non-business) “News” is continuously interviewing Trump Administration officials from the White House lawn with such headlines as “Every Measure of Inflation is lower than its been in over 4 years, Kevin Hassett says,” [6/6] in which Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, informs viewers that:

Tariff Doomers have egg on their face.

This is exactly what the president said... What about the economists? Like, they're so bitter there's no inflation. I mean, they can't understand why all their soothsayers were wrong about this,... we've had big positive surprises in jobs every month since President Trump's been in here. And so what that means is that we've created 500,000 more jobs now in just a few months.... We did this while we cut 50,000 federal government worker

All are singing off the same song-sheet. Gloating, actually. Government numbers verify that genius Trump was right all along.

Also from the Virtual Vanaprastha:

• Harvard and Columbia: What Stephen Miller, Russ Vought and the Heritage Foundation Know. June 2, 2025. "beginning with the stock market crash of 1929, they discovered that not all of the Progressive activists that had supposedly been swept away had actually disappeared."
• Shelving the books in a dying democracy. March 24, 2025. "I only now begin to shelve books, in fits and starts, with the scenes I am seeing replaying over and over as I do."
• Public Health Alert: Trump Variant Corona Virus 2025. February 17, 2025. "It is now running rampant through the body politic furiously working to hollow out its institutions and shift taxation..."
• Pierce Butler, Fanny Kemble, et al.  July 22, 2020.  ‘“An attempt of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to make a way around the original Fugitive Slave Law, of 1793, by finding a private agent guilty of kidnapping for having remanded a slave from Pennsylvania to Maryland was forcefully overturned by the U. S. Supreme Court in Prigg v. United States (1842).”’
• Be sure to check out the Browser's Guide to the Library of Babel.