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Donald Trump has stepped up his assault on the US’s most important economic institutions, sacking the head of the country’s labour statistics agency just hours after a gloomy jobs report.
The US president on Friday ordered officials to fire Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner Erika McEntarfer, who was appointed by his predecessor Joe Biden.
“[McEntarfer] will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes,” Trump said, claiming without evidence that she had massaged figures to help the former president.
Shortly after Trump fired McEntarfer, Federal Reserve governor Adriana Kugler said she would step down months before the end of her term in January. The opening on the Fed’s policy-setting board paves the way for Trump to name a successor to chair Jay Powell, who is set to step down from the role in May 2026.
“‘Too Late’ Powell should resign, just like Adriana Kugler, a Biden Appointee, resigned,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“She knew he was doing the wrong thing on Interest Rates. He should resign, also!”
The job changes at the heart of the US economic establishment came after the BLS’s July jobs report showed that employment growth cooled sharply over the past three months. Friday’s report showed unusually large downward revisions to the May and June employment figures.
The president alleged that the data had been “RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad”.
Sacking McEntarfer marked an unprecedented move by a president to intervene in the functioning of an agency that produces reports on the labour market and inflation, which underpin the pricing of trillions of dollars in assets globally.
David Wilcox, the former head of the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee, which was disbanded by the Trump Administration earlier this year, said firing the BLS commissioner would be “a serious blow to the integrity of the US statistical system”.
He added that it would raise questions among those who use the economic data about “whether the objective was to please the president or present the best possible picture of what’s going on in the US economy”.
A group headed up by the two previous heads of the agency, Friends of BLS, echoed that concern, noting that, “when leaders of other nations have politicised economic data and destroyed public trust in their data infrastructure, the consequences have been dire”.
The labour department confirmed on Friday evening that McEntarfer had been fired, and deputy commissioner William Wiatrowski would serve as acting commissioner for the BLS.
Trump’s crackdown on the BLS comes amid increasing alarm among investors over the president’s intensifying criticism of Powell for the central bank’s decision to keep interest rates on hold at restrictive levels for the past five meetings.
Trump had last week visited the central bank’s headquarters in Washington, berating Powell over monetary policy and cost overruns of a $2.5bn renovation project — in a rare public rupture between a president and Fed chief.
“The Economy is BOOMING under ‘TRUMP’ despite a Fed that also plays games, this time with Interest Rates,” he wrote as he announced McEntarfer’s firing. “Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell should also be ‘put out to pasture’.”
Later, in an interview with conservative network Newsmax, Trump said he would sack Powell “in a heartbeat”, but then added that “they say it would disturb the market”.
He reiterated that it was “most likely” Powell would stay in his post.
A fall in the dollar that was triggered by Friday’s weak jobs report accelerated after Kugler’s resignation announcement added to bets that Fed could soon assume a more dovish posture.
The dollar was down 2.3 per cent against the yen on Friday evening, and off 1.6 per cent against the euro. Two-year Treasury yields, which are sensitive to interest rate expectations, were near their day’s lows, down 0.26 percentage points at 3.68 per cent.
Krishna Guha at investment bank Evercore noted that “the proximate effect of Kugler’s resignation may well be to accelerate the process of selecting the next Fed chief”.
He added: “Such a person would in effect act as shadow Fed chair before taking over from Powell.”
Additional reporting by Stephanie Stacey in Washington
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