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Last week, while many in the US were focused on court orders and secret flights to El Salvador, something else happened that we at Trumponomics think should have gotten more attention. President Donald Trump fired two commissioners on the US Federal Trade Commission—apparently for being members of the Democratic Party. And while firing federal employees—legally or otherwise—is common practice in Trump’s Washington, it’s not supposed to happen at an independent agency—not like this anyway. But if it can happen to officials there, that raises questions about whether folks at other independent bodies, even senior people like Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, could be arbitrarily jettisoned, too.
That in turn made us think about developments in other corners of Washington that are raising red flags about the independence and oversight not only of agencies that implement economic and regulatory policies, but the data itself—data on which the world judges the health of the American economy. US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Elon Musk have been floating trial balloons on this topic of late.
So on this week’s episode, we’ve invited David Wilcox, director of US economic research for Bloomberg Economics, and editor Molly Smith to discuss the historical echoes of Trump’s move. Wilcox addresses existing legal restrictions on the Republican’s ability to fire independent officials, whether the Republican-appointee controlled Supreme Court is waiting for a chance to further empower the executive and what could happen when US economic data can no longer be trusted.
