US President Donald Trump said he would fire the head of the agency charged with publishing some of America’s most closely watched economic data, after a weaker-than-expected jobs report stoked further alarm about his tariff policies.
In a post on social media, Trump – without evidence – accused the commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, of manipulating jobs figures for political reasons.
The decision shocked Wall Street and raised alarm about White House interference in economic data at a time when many forecasters are predicting Trump’s tariffs will hurt the economy.
It came as global stock markets shuddered, after Trump moved forward with plans to sharply raise tariffs on goods around the world.
In the US, the three major indexes dropped, with the S&P closing 1.6% lower, following earlier sell-offs in Europe and Asia.
Ryan Sweet, chief US economist at Oxford Economics, said the decision to fire the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) was concerning, noting that high-quality economic data is essential to businesses and not easily replicated with private sources.
“Clearly, this is a step in a very bad direction,” he said. “If there are any questions around the integrity of the data … it’s going to create a lot of problems.”
Getty ImagesTrump has dismissed concerns about his tariff plans, which he says will boost manufacturing in the US and rebalance global trade.
But new data this week and a string of updates from companies on tariff costs have made those forecasts harder to ignore.
On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that employers in the US added just 73,000 jobs in July. It also dramatically revised estimates of job growth in May and June, reporting 250,000 fewer jobs created than previously thought.
Trump cited the revisions as he announced his decision to fire Ms McEntarfer.
“We need accurate Jobs Numbers. I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY,” he wrote on social media.
The head of the Labor Department, which oversees the BLS, wrote on social media that the agency’s deputy commissioner William Wiatrowski would step into the role during the search for a replacement.
The Labor Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The BLS revises jobs numbers every month as new data comes in, typically adding or subtracting ten of thousands of positions.
Though this month’s changes were significantly larger than usual, analysts said the updates were consistent with other data showing slowdown.
Some speculated that they could reflect a hit to small businesses, which are typically slower to respond to surveys and are especially vulnerable to tariffs.
“Revisions are normal,” Mr Sweet said. “They’re trying to get this right.”
Ms McEntarfer had worked for the government for more than 20 years before being nominated to lead the BLS in 2023. She was later confirmed near unanimously by the US Senate.
Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, defended Ms Entarfer, saying she had conducted herself with “great integrity”.
“It is imperative that decisionmakers understand that government statistics are unbiased and of the highest quality. By casting doubt on that, the President is damaging the United States, ” he wrote on social media.
Jed Kolko, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the firing raised serious alarm. It comes after the government has scaled back its collection of economic data, including information on inflation, amid government spending cuts.
“For six months, I’ve said that threats to economic data have been more collateral damage than intentional harm. No longer. Firing the head of the BLS is five-alarm intentional harm to the integrity of US economic data and the entire statistical system,” he wrote on social media.
Trump defended the decision and said her departure was needed to ensure there were “people that we can trust” in these posts.
“Why should anybody trust numbers?” the president told reporters when leaving the White House on Friday. “I believe the numbers were phony, just like they were before the election, and there were other times – so you know what I did? I fired her, and you know what I did? The right thing.”
Tariffs hit global markets
The fight over the data comes as Trump is remaking trade policy, hitting goods from countries around the world with new tariffs ranging from 10% to 50%.
When Trump put forward similar plans in April, shares in the US tumbled more than 10% in a week, the concerns spreading to the dollar and bond markets.
The stock market recovered after he suspended some of the most drastic measures, leaving in place a less punishing, more expected 10% levy. In recent weeks, indexes in the US have been trading around all-time highs.
The latest measures are less extreme than what Trump first put forward in April, but they will still push the average tariff rate to roughly 17%, up from less than 2.5% at the start of the year.
“The reality is Trump got emboldened by the fact that markets came right back,” Michael Gayed, a portfolio manager for The Free Markets ETF told the BBC’s Opening Bell. “Now he’s going to try his luck again.”
Shares in the US opened lower in the morning, with losses accelerating over the course of the afternoon. The S&P 500 closed down 1.6%, while the Dow dropped 1.2% and the Nasdaq fell 2.2%.
France’s CAC 40 closed down 2.9%, while German’s DAX fell 2.6%. In the UK, the FTSE fell 0.7%.
Earlier, the leading index in South Korea fell 3.8%, the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong dropped 1% and Japan’s Nikkei fell 0.6%.
In the aftermath of the jobs report, Trump also launched another attack Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell, who he says is moving too slowly to lower borrowing costs.
Powell leads the 12-person committee that sets the central bank’s interest rate policy, which influences interest rates for loans across the economy.
On Friday, one of the voting members of that committee, Adriana Kugler, whose term was due to end in January, said she would resign, giving Trump an opportunity to install someone new.