Trump fired the BLS chief over 'rigged' data claims. Economists say it cost the economy $20 billion

Source: Associated Press Moneywise via Yahoo! Finance

Moneywise
Trump fired the BLS chief over 'rigged' data claims. Economists say it cost the economy $20 billion

Joseph Zeballos-Roig
Wed, July 1, 2026 at 7:00 AM EDT 5 min read

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Last year, President Donald Trump took the unprecedented step of ousting Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after alleging economic data was being "rigged" without evidence. Now, research suggests Trump's move packed a punch against the U.S. economy. ... A new analysis published (1) in the Center for Economic and Policy Research from four economists indicates that the U.S. economy took a $20 billion hit in lost economic activity due to Trump's firing of McEntarfer last August. The analysis attributed the figure to a "sharp increase" in policy uncertainty that depressed economic activity since businesses operating in a cloudy landscape tend to pause investment decisions.

"The estimate is necessarily imprecise, but the broader implication is clear: trustworthy federal statistics are valuable economic infrastructure," the quartet of economists wrote in the blog post, adding that the finding was "particularly relevant for democracies" managing top-tier statistical agencies to measure economic development.

Other instances of data-meddling abroad

The analysis was authored by Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford University economist; Erica Groshen, an ex-BLS commissioner; Duncan Hobbs, a senior research associate at the American Enterprise Institute; and Michael Strain, another AEI economist. ... They applied a statistical model previously used to measure the economic impact of uncertainty during the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic. They calculated the impact to total $20 billion in lost output.

The group argued that preserving independent economic data is critical for the US economic growth since reliable statistics allow consumers and businesses to make their financial decisions with having to fly blind. ... "Protecting the credibility, independence, and technical capacity of federal statistical agencies is therefore not merely an administrative concern," they wrote. "It is a consequential economic one."

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Read more: https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/articles/trump-fired-bls-chief-over-110000985.html