Trump angrily fired the Labor Statistics Director! When "truth" becomes a toy of presidential power, the American economy is plunging into a blind storm.

When the President of the United States fires the director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for political reasons, it is not just a personnel news, but a policy maker's hand pushing the world's largest economy into an unknown storm. (Background: False Prosperity! US Non-farm Payrolls for July far below expectations, with May and June revised down by 258,000, Trump blasts Powell and fires the labor director) (Background: Slaughter! Bitcoin falls below $113,000, Ether loses $3,500, and the entire network gets liquidated for $1 billion) The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the latest data on the evening of the 1st: the US Non-farm Payrolls for July only added 73,000 jobs, far below the market expectation of 110,000, and this Non-farm Payrolls report revised the employment data for May and June down to 19,000 and 14,000 respectively, totaling a revision of 258,000 positions, highlighting the weakness of the labor market, leading investors to flee to safety, causing both US stocks and crypto assets to decline. Trump's attacks on Powell and the labor director The results of Friday's Non-farm Payrolls data also ignited President Trump's dissatisfaction, as he launched fierce criticisms against Federal Reserve Chairman Powell and labor director Erika McEntarfer on his social platform Truth Social. I just learned that our country's "employment data" is prepared by Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the labor statistics director appointed by Biden, who is falsifying employment data before the 2024 election in an attempt to increase Kamala Harris's chances of winning. The Bureau of Labor Statistics overestimated about 818,000 job growth data in March 2024, and again overestimated 112,000 in August and September before the 2024 presidential election, setting a record—how could it be so wrong? We need accurate employment data. I have instructed my team to immediately fire this politically appointed official by Biden, who will be replaced by someone more competent and qualified. Such important data must be fair and accurate, and cannot be manipulated for political purposes. She claims that only 73,000 jobs were added in July (shockingly!), and more importantly, the data for the previous two months was revised down by 258,000. A similar situation occurred in the first half of this year, and it was always a negative adjustment... When the country loses the ability to perceive the storm Although it has not been confirmed whether labor statistics director Erika McEntarfer will indeed be fired, Trump's actions are creating a brand new, asymmetric systemic risk. In the past, we were worried about the economic storm itself: recession, unemployment, inflation. But in the future, a more fundamental crisis emerges: our policymakers no longer adjust direction based on objective data, but instead demand data to fit their pre-set direction. When only 73,000 jobs were added in July, and the data for the previous two months was significantly revised down by 258,000, marking the worst quarterly performance since the pandemic, Trump's narrative that "my tariff policy is bringing economic prosperity" conflicts with the data. His choice is not to review the policy, but to eliminate the data publishers. This could push the entire economy into a "blind" state: How does the Federal Reserve set interest rates? If the credibility of inflation and employment data is in tatters, any decision by Powell could be seen as a political maneuver. How does Congress draft bail-out legislation? If we cannot accurately measure the scale and depth of unemployment, any assistance could be too slow or misdirected. How do investors allocate capital? When official data becomes political propaganda, the market will be filled with rumors and panic, and the flow of capital will no longer be based on value judgment, but on political suspicion. Long-term disrepair before the collapse of trust On the other hand, for the past fifteen years, whether under Democratic or Republican rule, the budget of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics has been severely cut under fiscal tightening pressures. According to reports in June this year, Trump's government proposed a budget for fiscal year 2026 that would cut the budget and staff of the Bureau of Labor Statistics by about 8%. This could indirectly lead to the loss of a large number of experienced statisticians, meaning fewer hands to conduct field surveys and fewer resources for quality control. The result is that the "revisions" of monthly employment reports in recent years have become increasingly large. This is not a conspiracy, but a lack of energy in the system, making the initial estimated data less precise and requiring more time to verify, resulting in larger adjustments. Trump cleverly utilized this. He repackaged the "data quality vulnerability" created by the agency's lack of resources into a political conspiracy. In the past, questioning the data was an internal debate over rules, challenging the accuracy of the data. But now, Trump's attack is that "the data is fake," which undermines the rules themselves and denies the legitimacy of the institutions. This fatal blow could detonate decades of accumulated trust deficit all at once. In the future, the market will be unable to distinguish: is there really a problem with the data, or is there a political need for it to be problematic? The ghost of yesterday in Argentina: when "truth" becomes the private property of the president What happens when a country's official data loses credibility? We do not need to imagine out of thin air, just look at the ghost of yesterday in Argentina. Between 2007 and 2015, Argentina's official statistical agency INDEC systematically underreported the true inflation rate under political pressure. When the official numbers showed mild inflation, the prices people felt in supermarkets soared several times more. The result was disastrous: investors completely lost confidence, capital fled en masse, and the entire country's economic management fell into paralysis because no one believed anything the government said. Trump's attack on the BLS is pushing the United States down this dangerous road. This incident marks the end of "economic truth" as a national public good and begins to be transformed into the personal political asset of the president. The value of data no longer depends on its methodological rigor and objectivity, but on whether it can serve the political narrative of those in power. When the data shows a strong economy, it is the great proof of "Trumponomics"; when the data shows a weak economy, it is the malicious fabrication of the "deep state". In this power shift, Trump attempts to forcibly transfer public trust in institutions to trust in himself. This is a gamble, wagering that his personal charisma can overshadow the professional reputation of a century-old institution. If he succeeds, then the next BLS director will face a soul-searching question: do I owe my loyalty to the data or to the president? If the latter, then the guardian of the American economy will be reduced from a vigilant "watchdog" to a tail-wagging "lapdog". There is no middle ground between watchdogs and lapdogs When the dust settles, what this incident leaves us with is not just the short-term turmoil of financial markets or a political spat. It touches the core of how a modern democratic country operates: do we still believe there is an objective reality independent of politics? The economic data of a country, like its legal system and press freedom, is the cornerstone of maintaining social trust and stable operation. Shaking it is equivalent to shaking the foundation of the entire country's governance. When global capital is asking, "Can we still trust America's numbers?", it will cause immeasurable erosion of the dollar's status as the global reserve currency. What we will get in the future is a watchdog that dares to sound the alarm when a storm approaches, or a lapdog that only caters to the master's will? On this issue, there is no ambiguity; the answer will determine whether we can sail out of the storm or accelerate our fall into darkness.