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In 2013, ahead of a scheduled visit from President Vladimir Putin to the small Russian town of Suzdal, local officials worried that he would be disappointed by the dilapidated buildings. In a modern revival of Grigory Potemkin’s possibly apocryphal deception of Catherine the Great, they slapped exterior wallpaper onto buildings, hoping to hide the decaying concrete behind illustrations of charming village homes. It was intended as a comforting myth to keep Putin happy. (In the end, Putin never showed up.)
On August 1, President Donald Trump demanded a comforting myth of his own, one that could have far greater consequences for the world economy. He began by firing a skilled economist, Erika McEntarfer, from her job running the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for a cardinal sin that ordinarily exists only in dictatorships: producing “bad numbers.” In authoritarian regimes, good numbers are always right, and if anyone says otherwise—if they are foolish enough to produce statistics that suggest the economy is souring or that Dear Leader isn’t producing historic growth and blockbuster jobs numbers—then it’s curtains on their career (if not their life). As is so often the case with Trump, reality itself seems to be “rigged.” Time to fix reality with Potemkin statistics.
This week, Trump named E. J. Antoni, the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, as McEntarfer’s replacement, subject to the charade of Senate Republican rubber-stamping that has become so common in Trump’s second term. As with despots throughout the world, Trump selected Antoni on the two criteria that consistently warm a dictator’s heart: loyalty and ideology.
Antoni, who contributed to Project 2025, has a résumé that’s thin on qualifications. Five years ago, according to his LinkedIn profile, he completed his doctorate in economics at Northern Illinois University, after a short stint teaching at Sauk Valley Community College. His only scholarly publication—ever—appears to be his doctoral thesis, which has been cited by other economists a grand total of one time. That sole citation came from a policy briefing written by Antoni’s then-colleague at the archconservative Texas Public Policy Foundation.
[Tim Naftali: Trump just did what not even Nixon dared to do]
Antoni has shown ignorance of basic economic data, including in a recent social-media post supporting Trump’s tariffs, in which he appeared to not grasp that a major index of import prices did not include tariffs in its published data. (Several established economists helpfully pointed this out to him.) Menzie Chinn, a renowned economics professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has chronicled a wide array of Antoni’s basic misunderstandings, misrepresentations, and mistakes. In other words, Antoni would probably not get hired as a junior economist at the agency he’s now slated to run.
By contrast, McEntarfer received her doctorate from Virginia Tech in 2002, then worked as an economist in a variety of roles at the Census Bureau—under both Republican and Democratic presidents—as well as in top jobs at the Treasury Department and the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Last year, she was confirmed by the Senate to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics on a bipartisan 86–8 vote. Then-Senators J. D. Vance and Marco Rubio both voted to confirm her. During her time in public service—not in academia—she produced at least 44 publications, which have been cited by other scholars 1,327 times.
But what Antoni lacks in credentials and expertise he makes up for in his MAGA worldview. On X, he follows a who’s who of Trump acolytes, including Carpe Donktum, a prolific meme creator who once shared an AI-generated video depicting Trump killing journalists and critics, and Jack Posobiec and Mike Cernovich, who both promoted the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy theory. International investors can see this, too—and they understand that nonpartisan government officials devoted to statistical accuracy do not behave like this.
Even conservative economists can see what’s going on. Stan Veuger, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, has noted that economists had hoped that Trump would appoint a competent, fair expert who could ensure confidence in the government’s data. “EJ Antoni is really the opposite of that,” Veuger lamented. “Even the people who may be somewhat sympathetic to his economic policy views don’t think he’s qualified.”
Yet again, the United States is lurching toward dynamics previously seen only in authoritarian regimes and dictatorships. Autocrats and wannabe despots consistently cook the books, manipulating statistics to make their nation’s economy appear better than it is. This comes at a cost: Once the statistical facade peels away, providing a glimpse of the crumbling structure below, investors stop believing the data. Eventually they flee, taking their money with them.
The economist Luis Martinez has used satellite images to test whether dictators were overstating their country’s growth rate. (Because real, sustained GDP growth inevitably produces increased light pollution in developing countries as cities expand and economic activity increases, nighttime images from space have proved to be a good proxy for economic growth.) Martinez’s data showed that the answer was yes—and by a lot. The leaders he studied were overstating GDP numbers by up to 35 percent. And they weren’t just fudging the numbers; they were almost certainly making them up.
Similarly, after Rwanda—which has long promoted itself as an African success story under the economic management of its dictator, Paul Kagame—boasted that it had reduced poverty by 6 percent over a five-year period, independent researchers concluded that poverty had actually increased by 5 to 7 percent. Other studies have confirmed that authoritarians frequently manipulate statistics strategically, ensuring that bad news never coincides with election cycles.
[Rogé Karma: The mystery of the strong economy has finally been solved]
A dictator’s ability to snap their fingers and transform economic malaise into a perceived miracle is an exercise of unconstrained personal power. But it is also a sign of weakness—one that inflicts significant damage to a country’s economy. That’s because economic investments involve putting capital at calculated risk, and those risks become unattractive when the underlying calculations are not based on trustworthy information. By contrast, leaders in functioning democracies tie themselves to the economic masts of independent institutions that are designed to speak truth to power—and investors trust them accordingly with their money.
Effective decision making is impossible without reliable, accurate information. And many crucial decisions in economic governance and investment rely on the BLS jobs numbers. The monthly reports sway Federal Reserve decisions, affect pension-payout calculations, and are factored into virtually every determination involving major global investment. Economists have expressed their worries that if the jobs data are even perceived as being subject to political pressure, international lending to the United States will decline. When Fox News highlighted this week that Antoni had previously expressed his desire to get rid of the monthly jobs reports, the value of the dollar fell shortly thereafter.
Antoni might not be able to manipulate the statistics themselves. Many economists are involved in compiling the data, and cooking the books without drawing notice would be difficult. But in the current American information environment, Antoni could do enormous damage simply by giving misleading political ammunition to the MAGA movement, dressed up in the official guise of a previously nonpartisan office. Antoni presumably has few qualms about the political pressure he’s inevitably going to face from Trump; after all, he has accepted a nomination for a job that now clearly comes with a risk of being fired if the official statistics aren’t to the president’s liking. And that means the clock is ticking for Antoni even if he is confirmed, because Potemkin villages all eventually crumble.
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