On August 11, Trump announced on Truth Social that he will be nominating the Heritage Foundation’s chief economist, Ej Antoni, as the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
Antoni will be succeeding Erika McEntarfer, who was fired after Trump, without evidence, called her job report “rigged.” Bizarrely, he did not apply the same label to her previous, more positive, job reports.
While Antoni has issued some substantive critiques of the BLS, he has yet to acknowledge the damage that the Trump administration has incurred on it. Trump’s hiring freeze on BLS has diminished its ability to collect data. He has also done little to help budgetary constraints that afflict the bureau.
The new commissioner has a partisan view of economics, having been a fellow at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, which touts supply-side economics, an ideology that has demonstrably failed since its adoption during the 1980s, leading to widespread inequality and deindustrialization (i.e., it negatively effected the job market). His previous position at the Heritage Foundation is congruent with the Trump Administration’s efforts to realize the think-tank’s Project 2025.
Trump’s replacement of a non-partisan figure with a clear loyalist jeopardizes the political independence of the BLS. Furthermore, it can result in skewed reports, something common in dictatorships such as China.
