The ancient Greek play “Antigon” by Sophocles warns that “no one wants the messenger carrying bad news” and “no one thrills the bad news holder.”
About 1,900 years later, Louis Carroll contributed another torque to the poorly thrilled response to the disappointment of the queen of hearts in his 1865 classic Alice in Wonderland. “Out with the head! “She would shout, whenever an item gave information that satisfied her.
In the 20th century, George Orwell delivered another version in its conscientious master’s work 1984: “Every record is destroyed or forged, each book is prescribed, each image is overcome, every statue and street and building are renamed, every date has changed. And that process continues day by day and minute. History has not stopped. Nothing exists but an endless present in which the party is always right.”
And so, we came in August 2025 and the disturbing dismissal of President Donald Trump to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner, Erica McNenterimmediately after the announcement of the report on negative jobs. On social media, Trump claimed without evidence that the commissioner “lied to job numbers”. He continued to say, “For a long time I had problems with the numbers. We are doing well. I believe the numbers were false as they were before the election, and there were other times. So I fired and did the right thing.”
In short, is this moment of Trump’s “Queen of Hearts” or something more?
Russian example
It is difficult to look beyond Trump’s long -term admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin. As we have documented in the past, Putin has a history of prescribing awkward narratives. Rosstadt, the nation’s official statistics agency, has a long -standing record of manipulating economic data to satisfy Putin. It is in great lengths to modify and supplement the bad numbers and hide the statistics of incessant statistics under the pressure of cream, especially as it is the invasion of Putin’s 2022. The Russian agency “switches to new methodologies” and “calculated data” with alarming frequency. Then, there is an open political interference – Putin fired Rosstadt’s heads, transferred control of the agency to politically appointed persons and appointed a shameless political choice for Deputy Economic Minister.
It’s no wonder that external accumulators ranging from international organizations to foreign investors regularly sound alarms around. “Concerns about the reliability and consistency of Economic editions of Kremlin“Putin now refuses to detect large economic indicators ranging from foreign trade data, monthly output data on oil and gas, capital and outflow inflows, financial statements by major companies, a central bank monetary base, foreign direct investment data, added by domestic values by industry and loan.
However, these are the largest high-frequency flow statistics that go into the construction of a forecast for GDP throughout the economy for any nation-from the United States to China. Since the outbreak of the war, the IMF has apparently allowed Russia to disrupt its membership standards – which requires member states to discover transparent, credible and comprehensive national income statistics. Free markets cannot function without confidential information. That’s why there is foreign direct investment in Russia dropped from over $ 100 billion to zeroAnd the activity of the capital market is practically frozen, with barely any IPO and a small global interest in Russian securities.
Not just Russia
Of course, China is a little better. The official Chinese statistics have become so widely recognized As manipulated and unfounded, analysts rely on a wide range of unofficial or proxy indicators to measure the true state of the Chinese economy. These shadow measures include everything from satellite image to the activity of nightlife to measurement of pollution from the smokers.
Even the highest economic officer in China, Prime Minister Le Kekiang, confronted secretly That he did not believe that the official numbers of GDP, instead, prefer to monitor the volume of rail freight, electricity consumption and bank loans.
Similarly, in 2022 Erdogan’s most subsequent action was his possible removal of Knows how to go downHead of the Turkish Statistical Institute, after the bureau reported an inflation rush of 36% over a year. The Royal Statistical Society and the American Statistical Association have jointly condemned “political interference in official statistics production”, calling on to enable the Statistical Institute to “produce objective statistical information”, an essential function “to ensure a healthy democracy in Turkey and to maintain international credibility”.
In Venezuela, President Nicolas Maduro has supposedly Use to a dozen economists and consultants in recent months in an attempt to suppress all proposals for deteriorating his country’s financial crisis.
Off with your head!
But this is America, it should be different. Trump’s sharp shooting at McKenkarfer surprised market analysts and economists of all political origin.
Recently, at CNBC, Elaine YaoA longtime Republican and a former Trump cabinet officer (she served as Secretary of Labor for eight years under George V. Bush and served as secretary of transport in the first Trump administration) directly disputed the president’s accusations. Zhao told the audience: “It is very difficult to confuse or interfere with these numbers. Bls is very concerned about the safety of these figures … If something would be bad … One of these 40 people (conducting), the final analysis would speak. So that’s very unlikely.”
Former Commissioner of Bls William BeachAnother appointed Trump, posted on social media shortly after McKartarfer’s shooting on Friday, calling it “Totally unfounded“The decision that” sets a dangerous precedent and undermines the Bureau’s statistical mission. ” Beach further criticized the president’s move on Sunday, saying his action “undermines the credibility” of the agency.
Trump has a (small) point when he claims that Bls Performance slides. Concerns about the timeliness and accuracy of the BLS data are long -term, with major audits occurring only a few months later. Bls and other statistical agencies confirmed the need to modernize their methodology, but progress was slow. After the disorders of Covid-19, the degree of audits of work was moving wider than in the past, despite attempts to improve their methodologies. A recent downward revision on Friday, taking over 250,000 jobs, is the highest of the pandemic top.
However, Trump’s accusations that the BLS lied to work numbers to weaken his credibility and that his Republican supporters emphasize his tendency to distort the facts. His apparently impulsive decision to dismiss McKartyer, with an unfounded belief that BSLs’ audits were politically motivated, remembers so many literary stories of authoritarianism.
Audits are a standard part of the BLS process, necessary to improve the accuracy of the US economy as new data arrives. Since 2003, the average audit has been about 51,000 jobs, not insignificant. Despite claims that may suggest otherwise, Trump’s tariff policies have introduced an unprecedented level of uncertainty in the US economy – by only 2020 – with many economists that predict recession as a consequence. Bloomberg convincingly suggested a possible link between the size of the negative audits of work and the recessional conditions.
Just as leading businesses around the world have been working on navigation in the uncertainties caused by the president’s economic policy, if we expect different outcomes from a government agency, which also faced restrictions and reducing resources as a result of arbitrary initiatives led by Doge? In addition, the Trump administration’s decision to dissolve the Federal Statistical Committee in March removed the vital mechanism for improving the agency’s performance, including modernizing data collection, summarizing and analyzing. While concerns about BLS methods, such as enumerator’s addiction instead of scanner data, are valid and deserve attention, this is not the right way to solve them.
This is far from the first time Trump has ordered the statistical integrity of the political theater. Other infamous examples include how, after Trump wrongly claims Woulde have a “95% chance” that Hurricane Dorian will hit Alabama, he insisted on showing a doctorate Maps with a hurricane with a trail of drawn Sharpi over Alabama, in plain Conversation of Noaa forecasts. Or there was a time when Trump sought secretary of Georgiador State Brad Rafensperger “Find me 11,000 votes“, Insisting that he defeated the presidential election in 2020 and firing their own deputies As was Bar and Chris Krebs who refused to go along with his denial choice.
Recently, in April 2025 Wrong formula Based on trade deficits, the leading economists to declare Trump’s numbers were “made‘And’wrong“Finally, Trump happened Routine inflation of the size of the crowd to his rallies, and requires to claim his subordinates His First inauguration It was most visited in history, contradictory to actual data through Nielsen’s rating, the number of frescoes and Metro The magic showing that much less attended his inauguration than Barack Obama’s inauguration, with Keyana Conway citing “Alternative facts“Look at the literature.
Opinions expressed in Fortune.com’s comments are only views of their authors and do not have to reflect the opinions and beliefs of Wealth.
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