The ancient Greek play “Antigone” by Sophocles warns that “no one loves the Messenger who brings bad news” and “No man who is happy in the bearer of bad news.”
After about 1900 years, Luis Carroll contributed to another spinning a non -double response to disappointment with the Queen of Hearts in the classic 1865 Is it not in the country of wonders?. “With their heads! “She was behaving, whenever he presented the topic of the information she bothered.
In the twentieth century, George Orwell delivered another version in his main work 1984: “Each record has been destroyed or falsified, and each book has been rewritten, each image was rewritten, and each image, street and building have been re -named, and each date has been changed. This process continues day after day.
Thus we reached August 2025 and President Donald Trump’s annoying to the Labor Statistics Commissioner, Erika MissinarfarImmediately after the issuance of the negative job report. On social media, Trump claimed without evidence that the Commissioner is “fake job numbers”. “I have faced problems with numbers for a long time. We are in good condition. I think the numbers were false as they were before the elections, and there were other times. So I launched them, and I did the right thing.”
In short, is the moment of “Queen of Hearts” in Trump, or something else?
Russian example
It is difficult to look beyond Trump’s long admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin. We have also documented it in the past, Putin has a history to rewrite uncomfortable novels. ROSSTAT, the country’s official statistical agency, has a long record of addressing the economic data to please Putin. He is doing his best to amend poor personalities and hide unexpected statistics under pressure from the Kremlin, especially since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The Russian Agency “turned into new methodologies” and “re -calcing data” with a frequency that warns of danger. Then there is a public political intervention – Putin launched the heads of Rozestate, transferring control of the agency to the political appointed, and appointed a blatant political choice as an economic deputy minister.
No wonder abroad, observers range from international organizations to foreign investors regularly on warnings. “Fears about the reliability and consistency of the economic publications of Karmlin“Putin now refuses to reveal major economic indicators ranging from foreign trade data, monthly output data on oil and gas, capital flows, financial data for major companies, cash base data for the Central Bank, foreign direct investment data, and air lending data.
However, these are high frequency flow statistics that are used to build the expectations of GDP at the economy level of any country-from the United States to China. Since the outbreak of the war, it appears that the International Monetary Fund has allowed Russia to violate its membership standards – which require member states to reveal and verify transparent national income statistics. Free markets cannot work without reliable information. For this reason for foreign direct investment in Russia He decreased from more than $ 100 billion to zeroAnd the activity of capital markets has almost frozen, that is, barely public subscriptions and a little global interest in Russian securities.
Not only Russia
Of course, China is a little better. The official Chinese statistics have become as well Widespread It is also manipulated and not based on the fact that analysts depend on a wide range of informal or agents to measure the true state of the Chinese economy. These shadow measures extend everything from satellite images to nightlife activity to measurement of pollution from SMOKESTACKS.
Even the highest economic official in China, Prime Minister Le Kekiang, Secretly He did not believe the official GDP numbers, instead, preferring to monitor the sizes of railway charging, electricity consumption and bank loans.
Likewise, in 2022, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan began launching a series of senior economic officials who questioned his unconventional policy of reducing interest rates to combat inflation and stimulating an economic revival at the same time. Erdogan’s most subordinate procedure was to eventually remove him Know how you are religiousThe head of the Turkish Statistical Institute, after the office informed an increase in inflation by 36 % on an annual basis. The Royal Statistical Association and the American Statistical League jointly condemned “political intervention in the production of the president in producing official statistics”, and urged him to allow the statistical institute “to produce objective statistical information”, which is an essential function “to ensure a health democracy in Türkiye and maintain international credibility in its statistics.”
In Venezuela, President Nicholas Maduro It is said More than ten economists and consultants have been detained in recent months in an attempt to suppress any suggestions about the exacerbation of the financial crisis in his country.
Being with her head!
But this America is supposed to be different. Trump’s sudden fire surprised the market and economists from all political backgrounds.
Recently, on CNBC, Eileen ZhaoShe is a long -term Republican and a former cabinet official (he held the position of Minister of Labor for eight years during the era of George W. Bush and held the position of Minister of Transport at the first Trump administration) who opposed the president’s accusations directly. Zhao told the audience: “It is very difficult to tamper with or interfere in these numbers. BLS is very worried about the safety of these numbers … If anything is terrible … One of these forty people (procedure) could have spoken the final analysis. So, it is very unlikely.”
Former BLS Commissioner William BeachAnother Trump was appointed, published on social media shortly after McNTarfer launch on Friday, describing it.Notable“Resolution” sets a dangerous precedent and undermines the statistical mission of the office. “Beach also criticized the president’s move on Sunday, saying that his work” undermines the credibility of “the agency.
Trump has a (small) point when he claims that BLS performance was slipping. Fears about the timing and accuracy of the BLS long -term data, with major reviews after only months. BLS and other statistical agencies acknowledged the need to update their methodology, but progress was slow. After Covid-19 disorders, the extent of job reviews was swing on a larger scale than they were in the past, despite attempts to improve their methodology. The last fall review on Friday, which offers more than 250,000 jobs, is the largest since the peak of the epidemic.
However, Trump’s accusations that BLS is fake jobs to weaken his credibility and Republican supporters highlight his tendency to distort the facts. His impulsive decision apparently remembers the launch of Minarker, based on an unfounded belief that BLS reviews were of political motives, a lot of literary photography of authoritarianism.
Reviews are a standard part of the BLS process, which is necessary to improve the accuracy of the American economy image with the arrival of new data. Since 2003, the average review has been about 51,000 jobs, not a small character in itself. Despite the allegations that may indicate otherwise, Trump’s tariff policies have introduced an unprecedented level of uncertainty in the American economy – they can only be approached until 2020 – with many economists who expect stagnation as a result. Bloomberg is convincingly suggested that there is a potential link between the size of negative job reviews and stagnation conditions.
Just as the leading companies around the world worked to move in the uncertainty resulting from the president’s economic policies, should we expect various results from a government agency that also faced employment restrictions and resource discounts due to the initiatives led by Dogs? In addition, the Trump administration’s decision to dissolve the Federal Statistical Consulting Committee in March removed a vital mechanism to improve the performance of the agency, including updating data collection, scheduling and analysis. While concerns about BLS methods, such as relying on meters instead of scanner data, are valid and interest in attention, this is not the right way to process them.
This is far from the first time that Trump has the statistical integrity of the political theater. Other notorious examples include how, after Trump Confirm There will be a “95 % chance” that will strike the Hurricane Dorian Alabama, that it is He insisted on showing a doctorate Hurricane maps with a Charity path drawn on Alabama, in Sahl conflict From expectations Noa. Or there was a time when Trump demanded the Minister of Georgia State Brad Raffensperger “You find 11,000 votesHe insists that he won the 2020 presidential elections and Launching his deputies Like Bill Bar and Chris Krebis, who refused to communicate with his denial in the elections.
Recently, in April 2025, Trump announced the “mutual” definitions on liberation day based on actual mutual commercial barriers, but from a Misleading Based on the commercial deficit, it was the most important economists to announce Trump’s numbers.It consists ofAnd “and”wrongFinally, there was Trump Routine inflation for the size of the crowd In his careers, and He demands his subordinates for him The first opening He was the most attended in history, as it contradicts the realistic data through the Nielsen classification, and the live broadcast numbers, Metro The ride, which appears much less than its inauguration from the inauguration of Barack Obama, was attended by Killian Conway’s martyrdom.Alternative facts“Look at literature.
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