The Economic Advisor of the White House, Kevin Hassett, defended on Sunday the decision of President Donald Trump to fire the head of the Office of Labor Statistics, as well as the statement of the president that the weakest job reports of what was expected were “manipulated”, but failed to produce any evidence to support Trump’s statement.
“What we need is a new set of eyes on the BLS,” said Hasset, director of the National Economic Council, “Meet The Press” of NBC News.
On Friday, the Office of Labor Statistics published a monthly job report that included weaker numbers than expected for July, plus the main downward reviews of May and June numbers.
In a publication about Truth Social on Friday, the president said that the job numbers were “manipulated” and that he had asked his team to fire the Bls commissioner Erika Mtientefer.
“We need precise work numbers. I have ordered my team to shoot this designated politician Biden, immediately. It will be replaced by someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers such as this should be fair and precise,” Trump wrote.
In another social publication of the truth, the president added: “In my opinion, today’s work numbers were manipulated to make Republicans and I seem bad.”
On Sunday, Hasset threw similar doubts about the accuracy of job numbers, pointing out the past reviews made to job reports after then President Joe Biden stopped running for re -election last year.
“There have been a lot of patterns that could make people wonder. And I think the most important thing for people to know is that it is the president’s highest priority that confesses to the data and that people reach the bottom of why these reviews are so unreliable,” Hassett told “Meet The Press” Moderator Kristen Welker.
He added later in the interview that the target of the Trump administration was to understand why there was such a considerable review for the employment numbers of recent months.
“The conclusion is that there were people involved in the creation of these numbers. And if you were executing the BLS and had a number that was a huge and politically important review, the largest since 1968 actually … then it would have a very long report explaining exactly what happened. And we did not understand it,” said Hassett.
It is not uncommon for Jobs reports to be reviewed in the months after its launch, but Hassett on Sunday emphasized that July’s review was one of the largest he has seen in decades.
Trump faced the criticisms of the Democrats and Republicans in Congress on Friday when he decided to say goodbye to Mcentofer, and several Republican senators questioned whether the dismissal would really help the Trump administration to improve future jobs numbers.
“We have to look for objective statistics somewhere. When the people who provide statistics are fired, make it much harder to issue judgments that, you already know, the statistics will not be politicized,” Senator Rand Paul, Republican of NBC News, said on Friday.
“I will investigate it, but the first impression is that you really cannot make the numbers different or better when shooting the people who count,” he added.
On Sunday, Hasset said that installing Trump’s “own people” will help you make reports of more “transparent and reliable” jobs in the future.
“The president loves his own people there so that when we see the numbers, they are more transparent and more reliable. And if there are great changes and great revisions, we expect more revisions for job data in September, for example, then we want to know why, we want people to explain it to us,” he said.
Hasset also talked about the president’s evolving rates agenda.
Last week, Trump formalized the commercial agreements with countries, including the European Union, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom, and imposed radical tariffs in some of the largest commercial partners of the United States, such as Canada, which now faces a 35% rate rate in goods not covered by the commercial agreement of Canada-Us-México.
Hasset was echoed on Sunday Trump’s statements to NBC News at the beginning of the week, indicating that there was still room to make commercial agreements for nations that had not yet completed the negotiations.
“For the agreements that are not yet ready. They will obtain the reciprocal rates soon, and then we would expect to continue with negotiations with those countries,” he told Welker.
Hasset also threw doubts about the idea that higher tariffs on consumer goods could lead to inflation, such as economic analysts have been predicting for months.
Instead, Hasett blamed the inflation of the Biden administration.
“Each inflation measure, if it adds it, if you observe the numbers of the upper line, it is lower than it has been in five months,” he said, and added later: “Therefore, inflation has decreased. And inflation has decreased for many reasons, but I think the main reason is that we are no longer printing money and sending it to people like Bidens.
