A wave of concern is spreading through financial, government, academic and media circles over the decision by US President Trump to sack Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), on Friday after a jobs report showed that the US labor market is weakening.

In a move that forms part of his drive to establish a presidential dictatorship, Trump justified the sacking with bogus claims that the numbers had been “rigged” to make him and the Republicans look bad.

While the head of the BLS is appointed by the president, it is not a partisan position, like a member of the cabinet. The commissioner is tasked with producing accurate data on the US economy, including the labor market and inflation.

McEntarfer was well-qualified to do that with more than 20 years’ experience in key statistical organizations.

While there have been problems in BLS data, with sometimes large revisions in the data having to be made, this is not because of any “rigging” by the agency. They arise from cuts. Estimates are that in real terms its funding was 18 percent lower for the fiscal year of 2024 than in 2009, and the agency is facing an 8 percent budget cut next year.

“It’s not that the BLS is cooking the books; it’s that the BLS is being cooked,” a former senior BLS economist David Hiles told the Financial Times.

Trump has said he will announce a new commissioner in the coming days, with his National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett making clear to NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday the prime qualification of the new appointee. The president, he said, “wants his own people in there.”

The concern in the US and around the world is that statistics emanating from the US on which financial decisions involving trillions of dollars depend are going to be completely unreliable.

The American Economic Association, the premier economic academic body, issued a statement on the day the sacking was announced expressing its “grave concern” over Trump’s action.

“The independence of the federal statistical agencies is essential to the proper functioning of a modern economy. Accurate, timely and impartial statistics are the foundations upon which households, businesses, and policymakers make critical decisions. Undermining the independence or credibility of these agencies threatens the integrity of the information that markets, institutions, and the public rely on every day.”

One of the issues highlighted by Trump’s social media post in which he announced the sacking of what he called “the Biden political appointee” was the marked downward revision, by a combined 285,000, of the number of jobs created in May and June, puncturing the claims by Trump that he is creating a “booming” economy.

The AEA noted that measuring the US economy in real time was “inherently challenging” and it was “standard practice” for estimates to be revised as more complete and higher quality data became available, and such revisions reflected a commitment to transparency and accuracy, “not failure or bias.”

Given the critical role of the US financial system in the global economy, the sacking has sparked international concern, compounding the uncertainty already generated by Trump’s tariff war, where governments, central banks, and other major institutions have to follow his social media posts to find out where the next hit might be coming from.

Speaking in Washington shortly after Trump’s decision was announced, the German finance minister, Lars Klingbeil, criticized the sacking and said democracies should “uphold the independence and strength of institutions.”

Perhaps the finance minister had not noticed, or if he had, did not want to say so publicly, but Trump’s agenda is to overturn the institutions of bourgeois democracy and establish a personalized regime.

The closest he came was to say the “political path” indicated by the BLS decision was “wrong” and that “I believe it’s right that independent institutions remain independent and that politics doesn’t interfere.”

The BLS decision is only adding to the confusion in Europe over what might be coming next from the Trump administration, after the European Union was hammered into accepting a so-called trade deal in which the US gave nothing, after Trump had threatened to impose a crippling 30 percent tariff hike.

As the FT reported earlier this week: “In Brussels and throughout the EU, initial relief at the prospect of avoiding even more punitive tariffs … has since been replaced by acrimony and confusion. The European Commission is still seeking clarity over the fate of steel imports and exemptions for the EU pharmaceutical sector.”

In an editorial, it described Trump’s BLS decision as a “chilling assault on economic data.”

It noted that the BLS produced reports on the labor market and inflation which “underpin the pricing of trillions of dollars in assets globally.”

It warned that “the drastic move creates a culture of fear around the production of national economic statistics. This gives investors, businesses, and the Fed reason to doubt whether concerns around a presidential backlash might influence forthcoming data releases, not just from the BLS but also from other public bodies, including the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which produces GDP numbers.”

Various representatives of financial capital pointed to the impact of the BLS decision on the stability of the world’s dollar-based financial markets in comments to the FT.

“Trust in institutions is why the US has been a destination for foreign investment. One of those institutions in the country’s statistical agencies,” said Michael Feroli, chief US economist at JP Morgan.

In a note to clients, the bank pointed to the far-reaching implications of the removal of McEntarfer, saying it “presents risks to the conduct of monetary policy, financial stability, and to the economic outlook.”

Marieke Blom, chief economist at the Dutch financial group ING, said the firing was “yet another way to step-by-step erode the institutional strength of the US.”

That strength has already been undermined by the tariff war against the world, and the continual denunciations of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and the threats to sack him because he will not lower interest rates. Even if Powell lasts until the scheduled end of his term next May, the damage has already been done because his replacement will be regarded as a political appointment made by Trump.

Ralph Schlosstein, chair emeritus at the New York-based investment bank Evercore, said the accuracy and integrity of US economic data were “fundamental to ensuring that monetary and fiscal policy responded appropriately to what was actually occurring in the real economy.”

He said that “any attempt to politicize that data will weaken confidence in both reported economic statistics and in US monetary and fiscal policymaking.”