President Donald Trump said he will name a new commissioner for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) within days after firing Erika McEntarfe on Friday. CBS News' Aaron Navarro has more details.

Washington

President Donald Trump has stated he will soon appoint a new commissioner for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) after dismissing Erika McEntarfer, citing dissatisfaction with recent job numbers. The removal has sparked criticism from economists and policy experts, who argue that the decision could threaten the credibility of economic data produced by the BLS, a key federal agency.

Trump defended his decision by questioning the accuracy of recent job reports and alleging political bias, though no evidence of such bias has been shown in the data. Critics have expressed concern that the firing could politicize the agency's work, potentially affecting the reliability of economic information relied upon by investors and other nations.

Trump says he'll name new BLS commissioner soon

After saying, you're fired to the top boss at the Bureau of Labor Statistics for job numbers not of the president's liking, President Donald Trump says he will name a new person for that role this week. Now, the sudden removal of Erika McEntarfer prompted a chorus of criticism from economists, even policy experts. They all are arguing the move threatens the integrity of economic data from a trusted federal agency. So how does the president defend his move? Well, here are McEntarfer's numbers. 73,000 jobs added in July. That number is lower than the 115,000 jobs that was expected to be on the boards. Now, let's look at how the markets reacted. They actually reacted poorly last week. They're jumping right now. But this is what the president had to say at the time. We'll be announcing a new statistician sometime over the next three, four days. We had no confidence. I mean, the numbers were ridiculous, what she announced. But that was just one negative number. All of the numbers seemed to be great. And so we'll see how that comes out. And if you remember, just before the election, this woman came out with these phenomenal numbers on Biden's economy. Phenomenal numbers. And then, right after the election, they announced that those numbers were wrong. And that's what they did the other day. So it's a scam, in my opinion. So let's go live to the White House. In CBS News, White House reporter Aaron Navarro. Aaron, the president says the job report was rigged. If he had to prove that in court, what actual hard evidence is he bringing? Yeah, Reid, good to be with you. The argument that we've heard from economic officials at the White House, both over the weekend and this morning, is that the collection of this data itself is outdated. And that has resulted in inaccurate data. They have pointed to response rates for these surveys from the Bureau of Labor Statistics severely dropping after the pandemic in 2020. They've also noted that this recent revision for the months of May and June was the largest since 1968. A White House spokesperson went on to add that the data has been, quote, historically inaccurate and led by totally incompetent individuals. So the conversation around how this data is collected is one part of this. But the president, in kind of making this move to fire the commissioner, is claiming in a sense that it has been rigged against them, that the numbers are rigged against them, in part because they are a former Biden economic advisor, in part because they were appointed by Biden. But if you look at the numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there's no clear political agenda when you look at the numbers of President Trump's, the last year of his first term and the last year of President Biden's term. The numbers in terms of revisions up and down for jobs are exactly the same between those two administrations. So in terms of evidence on a political bias front, that has not been shown yet. Well, Aaron, critics of the president say this is troubling because other nations depend on our data being solid. The criticism that we have a president who, if he doesn't like the data, says you're fired and then puts someone in who produces the data he wants. Can he actually do that? Yeah, it's other countries, investors from other countries, which the president and this administration wants to put more money into the U.S., use this data to kind of get a big picture snapshot of the economy in the U.S. And from talking to former labor officials today who had worked under Democratic and Republican administrations, this firing caused a real visceral reaction. They were really concerned that this data had been politicized in a way, they said it was, quote, unthinkable. And it's important to note that it's a whole team at the Bureau of Labor Statistics that puts these numbers together. How it was explained to me is that the commissioner is essentially the one at the top level to explain what these numbers mean, but they're not writing the numbers themselves. But to your general question of can he do that, the president does have the power to fire, hire political appointees at will, but it's worth watching if there are further moves to get rid of or cut other staffers at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, putting more questions out there on how this data is collected and the accuracy and integrity behind it. So while we have you here, we'll table that for just a second and ask you about this. The president reportedly just made a major announcement about India, what is that? Yeah, he said that the U.S. will be raising the tariff paid by India, quote, substantially because they're buying, quote, massive amounts of Russian oil. And this hearkens back to last week where the president, in an attempt to get a ceasefire agreement between Russia and Ukraine, threatened secondary sanctions on countries who do business with Russia. India, along with China, buy a lot of gas and oil from Russia that seems to be taking the next step in that threat, saying that India, who was already expected to have a 25%, quote, reciprocal tariff applied to them, could be seeing an even higher number down the line. Aaron Navarro, live from the White House, thank you so much.

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