Trump’s Data War: Latest Phase Explained
The Erosion of Trust in Official Data
The quiet firing of Lisa McEntarfer, commissioner of the Bureau of Labour Statistics (B.L.S.), by the Trump administration is more than just a personnel change. It’s a symptom of a broader,and deeply concerning,trend: the politicization of data and the intentional undermining of institutions designed to provide objective information. A functioning democracy relies on an informed citizenry-to make informed decisions and act as a counterweight to (or rally in support of) the executive, while safeguards for privacy provide a check against government overreach. Trump, recognizing that knowledge is power, is centralizing it.
the consequences may be hard to control. Other countries that have experimented with manipulating their economic data, or that have incentivized bureaucrats to do so, have faced difficulties. In Turkey,where government benefits are tied to inflation,the gap between the official rate (wich topped out at eighty-five per cent in 2022) and the real rate (an estimate in june 2022 put it at a hundred and sixty per cent) pushed millions into poverty and helped fuel a property bubble. During China’s Great Leap Forward, village officials, under intense pressure to meet agricultural-production standards, routinely inflated their figures, further driving up targets and contributing to a famine that caused tens of millions of deaths.
After McEntarfer’s firing, the White House put out a press release criticizing her for “a lengthy history of inaccuracies and incompetence” that had “completely eroded public trust in the government agency charged with disseminating key data used by policymakers and businesses to make consequential decisions.” Whether this was spin, or downright revisionism, depends on your point of view. The B.L.S. came under scrutiny during the Biden Administration,too-after a flubbed jobs-report rollout last year,during which a handful of banks got early access to the data,an internal inquiry called out a number of human errors,and admonished the agency,in terms that only a bureaucrat could love,to “develop a culture of enterprise-wide collaboration,break down silos,and work across organizational lines to ensure success.” The budget cuts and staffing reductions of the past few months have led to concerns that the bureau was stretched too thin, and it’s conceivable that Trump might have shared those concerns, though McEntarfer’s summary firing suggests otherwise.
For many observers, it’s Trump who is causing the erosion of public trust. Two former B.L.S. commissioners, including William Beach, whom Trump appointed in his first term, signed on to a statement condemning McEntarfer’s removal and paying tribute to their former colleagues at the bureau.Michael Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, wrote, “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.” (Charles Murray, a co-author of “The Bell Curve,” one of the more infamous examples of the way cherry-picked statistics can lead to questionable conclusions, replied “Agreed.”)
McEntarfer has not commented publicly since her firing, but her boss, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the Secretary of Labor, has. She wrote that she supports Trump’s decision to replace the commissioner so as to “ensure the American People can trust the vital and influential data coming from BLS”-but it may be too late for that. When it comes to public data, the appearance of interference can be as damaging as actual meddling, and the removal of an independent and credible official makes it harder to tell the difference. trust can be earned, but distrust can be taught. Trump’s most orthodox supporters learned not to trust the government long ago. Everyone else is now learning the same lesson.