President Trump’s move last week to fire the head of an obscure federal agency that collects a key piece of data — the nation’s employment figures — could end up hurting the U.S. economy. That’s because when leaders dispute their economic data, investors holding government debt start to worry they can trust a fickle government less, and borrowing costs go up for everyone. Not only could interest rates go up, but the value of the dollar could also fall.
“Any perception of political bias in economic data would accelerate the shift away from the dollar as a reserve currency,” Paul Donovan, chief economist of UBS Global Wealth Management, said in a client update reported by the Wall Street Journal this week.
“This is the kind of thing you would only expect to see in a banana republic,” Janet Yellin, a former Fed chair and the Treasury secretary under Joe Biden, told the New York Times.
There are real tensions at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which releases data on the U.S. workforce every month. The first set of publicly-released numbers, like a lot of statistics, are extrapolated from a small amount of data. That creates unavoidable inaccuracies, and it’s why the numbers are regularly revised later on: Timely data won’t be perfect, and perfect data won’t be timely. But that doesn’t mean there’s bias at play.
In this case, Trump’s tariff policies had a much bigger impact on small businesses — which take longer to report their employment data — than large businesses, which are usually the first to share info via payroll processing firms like ADP $ADP. And Trump didn’t like the revised data, which showed only 33,000 jobs created in May and June, instead of the 291,000 jobs earlier reported.
“Today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad,” Trump fumed on Truth Social.
Part of the problem may also be the perennially cash-starved U.S. government’s need for better, newer technology. “The solution to that is not to fire the head of B.L.S. but to make immediate investments in the federal statistical system,” Nancy Potok, former chief statistician of the U.S. under Trump, told the New York Times.
Potok warned back in January that outdated technology could cause problems. Trump may also be upset at the implications of lower job growth: His economic policies might not be working.
What happens next depends on how the new head of the agency acts. Will they tailor data to make Trump look good so they can keep their job or get a bonus? Or will they tell the truth?
Here’s a set of numbers that so far haven’t been revised: The U.S. economy has added 486,000 jobs during Trump’s second term, a 0.3% growth rate, while in the same period last year, the U.S. added 954,000 jobs, a 0.6% growth rate.
—Peter S. Green
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The usual suspects
- Meta v. Apple: It’s been a crazy week for Apple $AAPL CEO Tim Cook. Last week’s record-busting earnings were followed by a short dip in the share price and then a rush trip to the White House to tell President Trump he’ll invest $100 billion in the U.S., a bid to ward off high tariffs on iPhone imports. Then the Zuck dropped a bomb: As Meta $META pays AI geniuses $100 million plus, Zuck said our AI future will be led by personal devices like AI glasses, and suggested that a metal bar in your palm just won’t cut it. Apple’s delayed rollout of AI features and its slowness to pile cash into AI could help Zuck unseat the iPhone. Still, investors think the Apple is wormless: Shares in Apple rose 5% on Wednesday.
- Ronnie’s Baaaack! The Mac is Big again: After four quarters of flat or falling returns, McDonald’s $MCD said same-store sales rose 2.5% in the last quarter, but the weak economy and falling real wages for many Americans are still hurting Mickey D’s, which is having to work harder to show poor Americans it offers value. “Re-engaging the low-income consumer is critical,” CEO Chris Kempczinski said on an earnings call Wednesday.
- Boeing’s Fighter Blues: Some 3,200 machinists walked off the job at a Boeing $BA plant in Missouri, where they make F-15 and F/A18 fighter jets, after rejecting a proposed contract the union said didn’t offer a fair deal to the skilled workers. About 30% of Boeing’s revenue comes from defense work, and the company is still losing money as its civil aviation division battles to regain consumer trust after a series of accidents with the popular 737 Max. Despite $22.7 billion in revenue last quarter, the best performance in six years, Boeing lost $612 million. Last year, 30,000 machinists at Boeing’s Seattle civilian aircraft assembly plant went on strike for two months.
- Buffett’s Bust? Does the Oracle of Omaha know something we don’t? With the stock market hitting record highs, Warren Buffett’s holding company, Berkshire Hathaway $BRK.B , has been selling stock and piling up cash. In fact, it avoided the market so much that its earnings fell 4% in the last quarter. Its share price is up less than 3% this year. So has Buffett lost his magic touch? Well, long-time Berkshire exec Greg Abel is slowly taking over the reins as CEO from the 94-year-old Buffett, but maybe Berkshire Hathaway is simply a value investment, and will grow steadily over time.
- Delta’s AI Fury: Delta $DAL fliers and elected officials are jumping out of their seats over the airline’s moves to use AI to set fares. Delta sees it as a way to maximize revenue. Passengers and their advocates see it as a way to tap personal info to jack up fares on an individual basis. Delta denies it uses personal info to set prices.
- Miller Time is up: Beer maker Molson Coors $TAP, which also brews Miller Lite and Blue Moon, said the Trump Administration’s deportation policy and tariffs, along with rising prices, have flattened demand for their brews. CEO Gavin Hattersley blamed geopolitical events, trade uncertainties, and immigration policies. “These macro impacts in the U.S. have had a disproportionate effect on lower-income and Hispanic consumers,” he said on a call with analysts. The cost of aluminum for cans has also tripled this year, and Molson Coors expects sales to fall further.
- Not so fast, Dicky boy: Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat and consumer advocate, wants the FTC and the Justice Dept. to consider blocking Dick’s Sporting Goods’ $DKS planned $2.4 billion acquisition of Foot Locker $FL, warning the deal could cause higher prices for kicks, just as parents are worried by rising cost of school supplies. British shoe-chain owner JD Sports would split 15% of the U.S. shoe market with the Dicks-Foot Locker combo, putting the squeeze on smaller shoe sellers, Warren noted. Still, that’s below the 30% threshold that usually triggers antitrust lawsuits.
- Uber Problems: Uber’s $UBER revenue shot up 18% over a year earlier, and the company said it’s authorized a $20 billion share buyback. Just to get a sense of Uber’s ubiquity, the company had 180 million active users on its app last quarter, a 15% increase, and they booked 3.3 billion trips, up 18% from last year. Despite a new feature to let women riders avoid male drivers, the New York Times reported that Uber still has a “pervasive” problem with riders getting sexually assaulted by drivers.
- Meta v. Apple: It’s been a crazy week for Apple $AAPL CEO Tim Cook. Last week’s record-busting earnings were followed by a short dip in the share price and then a rush trip to the White House to tell President Trump he’ll invest $100 billion in the U.S., a bid to ward off high tariffs on iPhone imports. Then the Zuck dropped a bomb: As Meta $META pays AI geniuses $100 million plus, Zuck said our AI future will be led by personal devices like AI glasses, and suggested that a metal bar in your palm just won’t cut it. Apple’s delayed rollout of AI features and its slowness to pile cash into AI could help Zuck unseat the iPhone. Still, investors think the Apple is wormless: Shares in Apple rose 5% on Wednesday.
- Car Talk: It ain’t just Tesla. The end of the EV tax credit and the Trump Administration’s battle to protect the gas guzzlers has hit EV makers Rivian $RIVN and Lucid $LCID, too. Despite a surge in Q2 sales — likely buyers seeking that $7,500 credit — Rivian said it expects to lose $2 to $2.25 billion this year, up from a previous forecast of $1.7 to $1.9 billion. Its shares are down 30% from a late May peak. Rival Lucid said it lost $539.4 million, down from $643.4 million a year earlier. Its shares fell 6.6% after the announcement. Tesla last month reported a 16% drop in net income and a 13% drop in vehicle sales, with CEO Elon Musk warning of a possible “few rough quarters” without the EV credit. Meanwhile the rolling back of the EPA’s emission-cutting mandates means Detroit can keep making the gas-guzzling trucks and vans and super SUVs that American drivers prefer, without paying penalties. CEOs at Ford $F , GM $GM and Stellantis $STLA said the demise of the CAFE rules on fleet emissions will mean billions in short-term profits for the Big Three, letting them delay costly EV investments, even as Chinese EV makers take an ever-larger share of the global car market.
- Ronnie’s Baaaack! The Mac is Big again: After four quarters of flat or falling returns, McDonald’s $MCD said same-store sales rose 2.5% in the last quarter, but the weak economy and falling real wages for many Americans are still hurting Mickey D’s, which is having to work harder to show poor Americans it offers value. “Re-engaging the low-income consumer is critical,” CEO Chris Kempczinski said on an earnings call Wednesday.
- Boeing’s Fighter Blues: Some 3,200 machinists walked off the job at a Boeing $BA plant in Missouri, where they make F-15 and F/A18 fighter jets, after rejecting a proposed contract the union said didn’t offer a fair deal to the skilled workers. About 30% of Boeing’s revenue comes from defense work, and the company is still losing money as its civil aviation division battles to regain consumer trust after a series of accidents with the popular 737 Max. Despite $22.7 billion in revenue last quarter, the best performance in six years, Boeing lost $612 million. Last year, 30,000 machinists at Boeing’s Seattle civilian aircraft assembly plant went on strike for two months.
- Buffett’s Bust? Does the Oracle of Omaha know something we don’t? With the stock market hitting record highs, Warren Buffett’s holding company, Berkshire Hathaway $BRK.B , has been selling stock and piling up cash. In fact, it avoided the market so much that its earnings fell 4% in the last quarter. Its share price is up less than 3% this year. So has Buffett lost his magic touch? Well, long-time Berkshire exec Greg Abel is slowly taking over the reins as CEO from the 94-year-old Buffett, but maybe Berkshire Hathaway is simply a value investment, and will grow steadily over time.
- Delta’s AI Fury: Delta $DAL fliers and elected officials are jumping out of their seats over the airline’s moves to use AI to set fares. Delta sees it as a way to maximize revenue. Passengers and their advocates see it as a way to tap personal info to jack up fares on an individual basis. Delta denies it uses personal info to set prices.
- Miller Time is up: Beer maker Molson Coors $TAP, which also brews Miller Lite and Blue Moon, said the Trump Administration’s deportation policy and tariffs, along with rising prices, have flattened demand for their brews. CEO Gavin Hattersley blamed geopolitical events, trade uncertainties, and immigration policies. “These macro impacts in the U.S. have had a disproportionate effect on lower-income and Hispanic consumers,” he said on a call with analysts. The cost of aluminum for cans has also tripled this year, and Molson Coors expects sales to fall further.
- Not so fast, Dicky boy: Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat and consumer advocate, wants the FTC and the Justice Dept. to consider blocking Dick’s Sporting Goods’ $DKS planned $2.4 billion acquisition of Foot Locker $FL, warning the deal could cause higher prices for kicks, just as parents are worried by rising cost of school supplies. British shoe-chain owner JD Sports would split 15% of the U.S. shoe market with the Dicks-Foot Locker combo, putting the squeeze on smaller shoe sellers, Warren noted. Still, that’s below the 30% threshold that usually triggers antitrust lawsuits.
- Uber Problems: Uber’s $UBER revenue shot up 18% over a year earlier, and the company said it’s authorized a $20 billion share buyback. Just to get a sense of Uber’s ubiquity, the company had 180 million active users on its app last quarter, a 15% increase, and they booked 3.3 billion trips, up 18% from last year. Despite a new feature to let women riders avoid male drivers, the New York Times reported that Uber still has a “pervasive” problem with riders getting sexually assaulted by drivers.
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The media mirror
- Rupert’s Trump Vanity Ploy: Even as the New York Times $NYT and Wall Street Journal’s publishers sign licensing agreements with big AI players, the media bosses are still concerned that AI is eating up their intellectual property rights, and they want the Trump Administration’s help. So savvy News Corp $NWSA owner Rupert Murdoch, fresh off a Jeffrey Epstein-related feud with Trump, has pulled out the big guns: He’s warned Trump that if his plan to loosen AI regulation succeeds, his famed biography will be cannibalized by AI agents. “Suddenly, the Art of the Deal has become the Art of the Steal,” News Corp said in a statement.
- Wonder-y no more? Amazon $AMZN N has fired about 110 people from its Wondery podcast unit, and broken up the organization, as the podcast world evolves from audio to video. Narrative-driven podcasts will shift to the Audible audiobooks division, while the remaining Wondery business focuses on personality-driven video podcasts, like Travis and Jason Kelce’s “New Heights.”
- Coast Post? New York’s combative conservative tabloid, the New York Post, is launching a stand-alone West Coast edition in liberal Los Angeles next year, where local media like the Los Angeles Times have been shrinking their coverage. And owner News Corp $NWSA has deep pockets to try it: net profit soared to $743 million from $50 million last year, led largely by the sale of Australian broadcaster Foxtel for $690 million.
- Grey Lady Up: The New York Times $NYT saw its stock reach an all-time high this week as it added 230,000 digital subscribers, for a total of 11.9 million subscribers in print or on the web. Revenue climbed 10%, to $686 million, and operating profit grew to $106.6 million for the quarter. At $481 million, subscription revenue was 3.6 times ad revenue, of $134 million in the second quarter.
- ESPN’s in the Ring: Disney’s $DIS ESPN unit has agreed to pay $325 million a year to TKO Group $TKO for an exclusive right to air many of WWE’s biggest “wrestling” events. Comcast-owned $CMCSA NBC’s Peacock streaming service was paying about $180 million a year. WWE recently struck a 10-year $5 billion deal with Netflix $NFLX for its weekly show “Raw” Meanwhile, ESPN and the NFL have an even bigger deal: Disney will get control of the NFL Network and some other NFL media assets, in exchange for a 10% stake in ESPN, valued at between $2.5 and $3 billion. The deal could face regulatory scrutiny, with one stock analyst questioning whether the NFL’s stake in ESPN means other channels will get a fair shake when it comes to airing football games.
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The short stack
- McKinsey v. AI? Is AI coming for the consultants? As the Wall Street Journal notes in an excellent and somewhat schadenfreude-filled dive into the topic, “If AI can analyze information, crunch data and deliver a slick PowerPoint deck within seconds, how does the biggest name in consulting stay relevant?” The answer is apparently that it doesn’t. Many of the firm’s highly paid consultants may need to find a new line of work. As the Journal notes: “Artificial intelligence can increasingly do the work done by the firm’s highly paid consultants, often within minutes.”
- Them billions just keep coming for OpenAI: Sam Altman’s AI venture could see its valuation skyrocket by 66%, if a new round of financing talks succeed at valuing the company at $500 billion, according to press reports. In March, OpenAI announced a $40 billion funding round valuing the company at $300 billion. The new round could be led by Thrive Capital, which invested in a previous round. OpenAI is marching forward on both the consumer and B2B fronts: ChatGPT has nearly hit a mind-boggling 700 million weekly active users, and it’s released two new language models that will be cheaper and easier for developers to run and customize for business users.
- Tractor Supply at your door: Rural supplies company Tractor Supply $TSCO said it’s adding pickup trucks and trailers to do its own home delivery of in-store and online purchases from its 2,300 U.S. outlets.
Trumplandia
- What else is family for? Presidential offspring Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. have a new business. They’re helping launch a $300 million SPAC called New America to buy U.S. companies that, as a filing says, “play a meaningful role in revitalizing domestic manufacturing.” Of course, U.S. manufacturers rely on government policies on tax breaks, contracts and tariffs decided by the government led by? Well. Do the math.
- Tariffs: Maybe he’s just channeling his inner Jerry Maguire who famously said “show me the money.” Last week, Trump threatened South Korea with 25% tariffs, then said the country had “an offer to buy down those tariffs.” Then South Korea offered to invest $350 billion in the U.S., and buy $100 billion in liquified natural gas. The next day, Trump cut the tariff to 15%. This week, Switzerland’s president, Karin Keller-Sutter, is in DC to buy down the 39% tariffs imposed on her country, and other countries are lining up to cut deals. The conservative Cato Institute called Trump’s tactics “a global shakedown.” So far, none of these investment deals have been committed to paper, so it’s not clear how solid they are. Late Wednesday, Trump said he’ll put a 100% tariff on imported semiconductors but not for companies “building in the U.S.”
- Tax cuts: Some of the biggest U.S. companies are already seeing their wallets bulge as provisions of the Trump tax bill begin to take hold. AT&T $T said in its most recent earnings report that it expects $1.5 to $2 billion in cash savings, an 11% increase in free cash flow, by allowing it to depreciate new assets and deduct R&D costs immediately. Meta $META could save as much as $11 billion, 31% of previously estimated FCF, and Amazon $AMZN could save $15.7 billion, or 43% of FCF. “More cash in the company’s pocket. Less cash in Uncle Sam’s pocket. That in theory should be good for investors,” tax analyst David Zion told the Wall Street Journal.
- Scottie’s out: In the latest episode of Apprentice: Fed Chair Edition, President Trump said Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent is out of the running to replace Jerome Powell, whose term expires next May. Speaking on CNBC, Trump said he had four candidates, including two guys named Kevin: Kevin Hassett, one of his closest economic advisers, and former Fed governor Kevin Warsh. “I love Scott, but he wants to stay where he is,” Trump said of Bessent. Trump declined to name the other two candidates. If they are also both named Kevin, it would be a remarkable recruitment round, indeed.
Peter S. Green is a veteran reporter and editor who has spent more than two decades covering business and finance from Eastern Europe to New York City, and has worked for Bloomberg News, The New York Post, The New York Times and The Messenger. He lives in New York City and is always looking for the next big story.
