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Think Tank Launches 'One-Stop Shop' for Economic Info to Fight Trump's War on Data
"We’re collecting all data we can to assess the economy’s health in this time when the gold standard data are under attack,” said the Economic Policy Institute's senior economist.
Nov 18, 2025
Amid President Donald Trump's efforts to conceal the harmful consequences of his economic policies by hiding key data and replacing economists who tell harsh truths with partisan yes-people, a leading US think tank on Monday announced a new digital dashboard "to provide an accountability check" against attempts to manipulate and mislead the public.
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) says its new data accountability dashboard "serves as a one-stop shop" for economic data as federal statistic agencies (FSAs), once the "gold standard" for information, "face historically unprecedented threats from the Trump administration to their capacity and even their independence."
"This raises the specter of a future where FSA data cannot be relied upon to honestly report whether the US economy is experiencing dysfunction," EPI said.
In a bid to circumvent this, the EPI dashboard "displays a range of data not collected or disseminated by FSAs to shed some light on the economy during the pause in government data collection during the shutdown and—even more importantly—to provide an accountability check against efforts to manipulate FSA data in the future."
The federal statistical agencies (FSAs) that produce the gold standard economic data employers/investors/job seekers/workers/policymakers rely on to assess the health of the U.S. economy face unprecedented threats.We've pulled next-best data from non-FSA sources to help keep an eye on things. 1/
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— Economic Policy Institute (@epi.org) November 18, 2025 at 7:19 AM
As EPI senior economist Elise Gould explained in a statement: “The data collected by the federal statistical agencies are an incredibly valuable public good. While there would never be a good time to squander it, the absolute worst time to degrade data quality is when the economy is facing policy shocks that threaten to cause either a recession or an uptick of inflation."
"Given this urgency, we’re collecting all data we can to assess the economy’s health in this time when the gold standard data are under attack,” she added.
Trump's attempts to hide unfavorable economic data date back to his first administration, when he blocked or delayed economic analyses on the projected impacts of his tariffs. For example, half a dozen economists at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) quit en masse in April 2019, claiming they suffered retaliation for publishing reports that shed negative light on the president's trade and taxation policies.
In a related move that year, the USDA abruptly relocated its Economic Research Service main office from Washington, DC to Kansas City, Missouri, prompting another wave of resignations. ERS publications—including reports on farm income, rural economies, and trade impacts—dropped sharply, with key analyses delayed or blocked. Critics, including former agency officials, argued that the move to Kansas City was intended to conceal negative impacts of Trump's trade policies from the public.
During Trump's second administration, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick disbanded the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee (FESAC), a key body that worked under the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis to ensure that the federal government produces accurate data on economic indicators.
Trump also gutted the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Technical Advisory Committee, which had advised the Department of Labor about how economic changes can impact data collection. In August, Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, baselessly accusing her of manipulating economic data to harm him politically by publishing a jobs report showing weak employment growth.
Two weeks later, the president nominated EJ Antoni, a senior economist at the Heritage Foundation described as a "partisan bomb thrower" who helped write Project 2025, a blueprint for a far-right overhaul of the federal government, to replace McEntarfer. Antoni stunned critics with suggestions including eliminating federal monthly jobs reports, and with his overall lack of data management experience. His nomination was later withdrawn amid mounting controversy.
Additionally, the Trump administration has summarily fired dozens of independent agency leaders, required every federal agency to have a White House liaison, and required ostensibly independent agencies to submit draft regulations to the Office of Management and Budget—headed by Project 2025 architect Russell Vought—for review before publication.
As Common Dreams reported, an analysis published in September by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities detailed how the Trump administration's politicization of data, combined with funding cuts, is making it more difficult for experts to determine how the president's policies are impacting US households.
From ending tracking of the impacts of climate-driven extreme weather, to removing a study from the Department of Justice website that showed violent attacks by far-right extremists outpaced those committed by the left, to removing questions about gender identity from key crime surveys, the Trump administration's attacks on information transcend economic data.
"The assault on data, research, and facts is fundamental to Trump and his authoritarian regime," Liza Featherstone, a contributing editor at The New Republic, recently wrote. "He seems to understand that data provides the basis for arguments, and he does not want any arguments. He also understands that facts and knowledge can only be nourished and sustained by institutions and experts, so he is destroying those institutions and pink-slipping those experts."
"We must appreciate their importance and their stakes as well as he does, and remain as committed to the institutions, the data, the facts, and the experts as Trump is to their eradication," Featherstone added. "He has brought sincere zeal to their destruction, and we must bring an even greater passion to their restoration and renaissance. We will need it, as ours is the harder job."
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More Signs of Distress in Trump Economy as Inflation, Jobless Claims Rise
"The middle-class squeeze from tariffs is here," observed one economist.
Sep 11, 2025
New economic data released on Thursday revealed fresh signs of stress for the US economy and working families.
A new Consumer Price Index report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) found that overall inflation rose by 2.9% year-over-year in August, while core inflation—a measure that excludes commodities such as food and energy—rose 3.1%, the highest reading recorded since this past January.
Both of these numbers were in line with economists' consensus estimates, although they still showed inflation trending in the wrong direction during a time when the US labor market is also showing signs of weakness.
Looking deeper into the report reveals that the cost of groceries continues to be a major pain point for US consumers, as food prices jumped by 0.6% on the month and 2.7% year-over-year.
The report comes days after US President Donald Trump said in a radio interview, "We have no inflation. Prices are down on just about everything."
New York Times economics reporter Ben Casselman said that the spike in food prices was notable because it came after a long period in which food inflation had been coming down.
"Grocery prices are once again rising relatively rapidly," he observed in a social media post. "Food inflation had eased significantly, and had been running well below overall prices, but that's no longer true."
Heather Long, the chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, singled out some particularly important household staples in the report that she argued were very likely being impacted by President Donald Trump's tariffs.
Among other things, Long said that coffee was now 21% more expensive than it was a year ago, while living room and dining room furniture saw a 10% year-over-year increase, and the price of toilet paper rose by an annualized 5%.
"The middle-class squeeze from tariffs is here," she said. "Inflation hit 2.9% in August, the highest since January and up from 2.3% in April. It's troubling that so many basic necessities are rising in price again: Food, gas, clothing, and shelter all had big cost jumps in August. And this is only the beginning."
Mike Konczal, senior director of policy and research at the Economic Security Project and a former member of President Joe Biden's National Economic Council, said that the new report shows "inflation is broadening" given that the "percent of items that had at least a 3% annualized price increase over the last month" increased to nearly 60%, which is the highest percentage seen in years.
The inflation report was not the only troubling economic indicator, however.
The BLS also revealed that jobless claims in the US jumped to 263,000 last week, which was significantly higher than the 235,000 claims expected by economists. Joe Weisenthal, the co-host of the Bloomberg "Odd Lots" podcast, noted that this was the highest total for weekly jobless claims in nearly four years.
Long also flagged the worrying jobless claims number and predicted that it was just the start of a further downturn in the US economy.
"'Cost cutting' is back among CEOs and that is corporate speak for more layoffs," she said. "It's going to be a rough few months ahead as the tariffs impacts work their way through the economy. Americans will experience higher prices and (likely) more layoffs."
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'Devastating' New Jobs Report Shows Labor Market 'Cracking' Under Trump
"The theory of Trumponomics is failing," said one economist.
Sep 05, 2025
A federal jobs report released on Friday showed the US economy added a mere 22,000 jobs in August in yet another signal of weakness in the US labor market.
Economists had projected the economy would produce 75,000 jobs on the month, which means that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) numbers released on Friday were well below the consensus estimate.
What's more, the total number of jobs created in July and June were once again revised downward, and the economy as a whole has added an average of fewer than 30,000 jobs over the last three months.
Heather Long, the chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, put the bad jobs report in stark terms.
"The labor market is going from frozen to cracking," she said, and then pointed to net job losses in industries including mining, construction, and manufacturing that show significant stress in the blue-collar economy. In fact, the majority of job growth came from the healthcare industry over the last month.
"The US job market is almost entirely dependent on healthcare," she observed. "That's not healthy for the economy."
Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Michigan, also said that the new numbers showed a continued deterioration in both the US labor market and the economy as a whole.
"I'm worried," he said. "The economy was in a good place in late 2024. That's no longer true. And the trajectory is, at a minimum, concerning. That's millions of people's lives, and millions of stories of pain."
Wolfers also zeroed in on the fact that manufacturing employment has been contracting for several months, despite US President Donald Trump's pledges to lead a manufacturing revitalization.
"But the Administration has made dramatic policy shift to boost manufacturing, and it just ain't working," he said. "Manufacturing employment fell [by 12,000 jobs], and is down [78,000 jobs] over the year."
Former BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer, whom Trump fired last month after he baselessly accused her of concocting negative job numbers to harm him politically, argued on Bluesky that the new report's downward revisions of previous monthly estimates are indicative of a labor market that is very quickly cooling.
"The larger-than-usual downward revision last month was in large part driven by a negative skew in the job growth distribution among late reporting firms," she said. "That's unusual, but it's happened before when the pace of job growth slows rapidly. This print is more evidence that was the case."
Mike Konczal, senior director of policy and research at the Economic Security Project and former member of President Joe Biden's National Economic Council, argued the new jobs report demonstrates that "the theory of Trumponomics is failing."
"The first theory of Trumponomics was that tariffs would build up manufacturing work and federal workforce cuts would free up workers for them," he explained. "That's failed. Manufacturing lost jobs almost as fast as the federal workforce (-12 vs. -15K)."
Konczal then showed how Trump's tariffs have hurt his stated goal of bringing back well-paying jobs for blue-collar men, as industries that produce such jobs have also been harmed by his tariffs on foreign goods and materials.
He also pointed out that Trump advisers claimed that mass deportations of undocumented immigrants would create new job openings that native-born workers would rush in to fill.
"But, you guessed it, that's also failing," he said. "Amidst the broader weakening, the native-born unemployment rate is at the highest levels since the pandemic."
Elise Gould, the director of health policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, similarly noted that "there have... been sustained losses over recent months in manufacturing, construction, and mining," in recent months, which she said was "an indication that Trump's blue-collar renaissance is clearly not happening."
Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at the progressive advocacy organization Groundwork Collaborative, called the jobs report "devastating," while laying the blame at the feet of Trump.
"Trump's promises to working families have fallen flat," he said. "The unemployment rate is the highest in nearly four years, the economy has lost nearly 40,000 manufacturing jobs this year alone, and millions of workers are unable to find full-time employment. Families are getting fewer chances to secure the American dream in Trump's economy."
Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) reacted to the jobs report by issuing a scathing rebuke to Trump and his management of the economy.
"Donald Trump inherited an economy built on years of steady job growth," he said. "In just seven months, he's managed to screw it up—just like he's screwed up everything else in his life. Now, working families are getting squeezed from every direction: higher prices, Republicans' Big Ugly Law ripping health care away from millions, and a job market that's slowing down."
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