Economists Are Seriously Alarmed About Official Data Under Trump
By: Robert McCoy (The New Republic)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
A new poll of economists finds an overwhelming majority agree that the U.S. government's official data on the economy is a big problem.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
As the Trump administration guts and otherwise interferes with federal statistical agencies, nearly 90 percent of economists recently surveyed by Reuters are concerned about the reliability of official government data on the economy.
From July 11 to 24, Reuters polled economists—including "Nobel Laureates, former policymakers, academics from top U.S. universities, and economists from major banks, consultancies and think tanks"—and found that 89 of 100 of them "were concerned about the quality of official U.S. economic data," with 41 saying they are "very concerned."
Reuters' report shows that alarm over Trump's cuts to key agencies that collect and deliver data, such as statistics on jobs and inflation (to say nothing of other data impacted by Trump, such as that on health, weather, and education), has reached fever pitch.
Erica Groshen, former Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, told Reuters, "I can't help but worry some deadlines [for future data releases] are going to be missed and undetected biases or other errors are going to start creeping into some of these reports just because of the reduction in staff."
Groshen also noted "another very big risk": that "all of the current administration's changes will make civil service employees more like political appointees."
MSNBC's Steve Benen observed in an article earlier this month that the prospect of "corruption and political mischief" interfering with federal statistics under Trump is also worth keeping in mind. "Perhaps Donald Trump, the argument goes, might use his influence to tell the Labor Department to manipulate the data and deceive the public," Benen wrote—though he noted "there's been no evidence of statistics being altered to fit a political narrative" to date.
Even setting that worrisome possibility aside, Trump's war against trustworthy federal data already threatens to wreak real havoc.
During a press conference last month, Fed chair (and MAGA persona non grata) Jerome Powell explained why we mustn't take for granted "having good data" on the economy: This information, he pointed out, "doesn't just help the Fed. It helps the government, it helps Congress, it helps the executive branch. More importantly, really, it helps businesses. They need to know what's going on in the economy."
For years, Powell noted, the United States has prided itself on being a leader in "measuring and understanding what's happening in, in our very large and dynamic economy."
"I hate to see us cutting back on that," he continued, "because it is a real benefit to the general public that people in all kinds of jobs have the best possible understanding of what's happening in the economy."
More on the economy:Trump Is Really Asking People to Venmo to Pay Off the National DebtMost Recent PostMalcolm Ferguson/July 25, 2025/1:06 p.m. ET
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This was inevitable. When the leader is a pathological liar, and the underlings are toadies and boot lickers, you have a high chance of being fed official misinformation.
And even if they are telling the truth they suffer from the "little boy who cried wolf" syndrome.
Brings back to mind Trump during the early days of COVID. He didn't want to let the cruise ship dock because it would make America's COVID numbers go up.
The economy is as good as Trump tells us it is as long as nobody refutes it. Without correct numbers, nobody can refute it.
Nothing Trump says can be believed without independent verification. Its a shame for our country but its certainly true.
It's not just a high chance, it's a guarantee. This administration will never be truthful about the actual facts unless they are eventually forced to, but even then I'm sure they'll all try to get out of it by taking the 5th. They will spin anything and everything to make it seem like Trump is some sort of financial God and claim everything he did is the best, he made no mistakes, the ground flowers wherever he steps, and then after we get him out of office and start washing the shit stains off the Whitehouse it will all come out how unethical, immoral, corrupt, abusive and illegal just about everything his administration did was. It's very sad that America has to suffer such indignity, but karma will not be kind to the MAGA faithful who inflicted this monumental embarrassment upon us.
And it has already been done. Anyone remember Florida sending false COVID numbers to the CDC and NIH?
I was thinking about making a seed to ask everyone if they have ever heard Trump say he was wrong about something (I dont recall it EVER happening), but it probably wouldnt be worth the effort for the responses it would get.
Yes. I remember a bunch of progressives getting duped by a crazy lady who claimed she was being told to submit false numbers only for her to be exposed as a fraud years ago. Sad people still believe it, but not surprised. In line with Jussie Smollett.
Probably correct, but in your seed, you can include any modern day politician, including Obama and Biden, Harris, etc, and you will get the same responses, or at least deflections to Trump.
Both Obama and Biden admitted they made mistakes during their lives and as president. I dont see any time Trump has done that. The closest he will come is when he says he trusted someone he shouldnt have.
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From the perspective of the administration, this is a feature, not a bug. Without data to contradict them, they are free to say whatever they like about the state of the economy.
Any day now, Trump will inform us that he has reduced inflation 1500% and signed trade agreements with 5 or 6 thousand countries.
It's not like they had a great track record for accuracy before. We've been through 2+ years of significant downward revisions, at least.
Trump just defended the weak US dollar. Even though his policies are what weakened it. He is not making America great.
Rather than allow FEMA to release funds to states that have been hard hit with disasters, his directive today is to release over $600 million dollars away from FEMA and hand it over to ICE.
How is giving away FEMA recovery money for the American people to ICE which already received billions from the "Big Beautiful Bill" supposed to help?
It's bonkers! ICE just got more money than a small country and it does not need FEMA or their dollars.
The dollar will be getting weaker along with all of Americans if these crazy decisions keep going on.