Donald Trump said he would name a new labour statistics boss and fill an open seat on the Federal Reserve board this week as he seeks to tighten his grip on US economic data and policymaking.
The US president said he would select a new commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the next three or four days after sacking the previous head following the release of disappointing economic data. He said he would probably choose a new Fed governor over “the next couple of days”.
The appointees to top positions at two of the most important US economic institutions could help shape Trump’s agenda for the rest of his presidency. Both roles require confirmation by the US Senate.
In an unprecedented move, Trump fired BLS head Erika McEntarfer following a weak jobs report on Friday. The move was condemned as an effort to politicise vital economic data that underpin the pricing of trillions of dollars worth of global assets and shape policymakers’ interest rate decisions.
“We’ll be announcing a new statistician sometime over the next three, four days,” Trump told reporters as he departed New Jersey for Washington on Sunday night. He repeated claims that McEntarfer had manipulated the key economic data without offering any evidence.
“We had no confidence. I mean, the numbers were ridiculous when she announced” them, he said.
He added that he has “a couple of people in mind” to replace outgoing Fed governor Adriana Kugler, who quit on Friday five months before her term was due to end. This will give Trump the chance to pick a successor to Fed chair Jay Powell inside the US central bank earlier than anticipated.
The favourites to replace Powell are Kevin Hassett, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, Kevin Warsh of Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Kugler’s seat is one of the few that is expected to open up during Trump’s second term.
“I think she left because she agreed with me on interest rates, and yet they were on the other side of the ballpark,” Trump said. He has been lambasting the Fed for not lowering interest rates to his liking.
Powell’s term at the helm of the Fed ends in May 2026.
Trump has been demanding that Powell and the rest of the Federal Open Market Committee lower interest rates, and has launched verbal attacks and tirades against the chair for keeping monetary policy steady.
“He’s a knucklehead,” Trump said of Powell last month. “He should have cut interest rates a long time ago . . . I think he does a terrible job,” he added.
Powell’s stint as chair ends next year but he has the option to stay on as a governor until 2028. While most chairs quit the Fed once their term at the helm expires, Powell has indicated he is yet to decide whether to leave the central bank or potentially block another Trump appointee by remaining on the board.
After Kugler’s announcement, Trump encouraged Powell to resign as well in a social media post. None of the other five Fed governors will see their terms expire during Trump’s second term.
The White House on Sunday defended Trump’s firing of McEntarfer, saying the BLS needed a “pair of fresh eyes” since “the numbers have started to be so unreliable”. It homed in on the regular data revisions BLS makes, which occur during both Republican and Democratic administrations.
“The data can’t be propaganda. The data has to be something that you can trust,” Hassett told Fox News on Sunday.
“And if the data aren’t that good, then it’s a real problem for the US. And right now, the data have become very unreliable with these massive revisions over the last few years.”
In separate comments to NBC, Hassett said that Trump “wants his own people there so that when we see the numbers, they’re more transparent and more reliable”.
There was swift condemnation of McEntarfer’s sacking. She was confirmed in a 86-8 Senate vote in January 2024, with bipartisan support, including from vice-president JD Vance and secretary of state Marco Rubio, both of whom were senators at the time.
William Beach, who was BLS commissioner during Trump’s first term, said the firing is “damaging”.
“I don’t know that there’s any grounds at all for this firing. And it really hurts the statistical system. It undermines credibility in BLS,” he told CNN on Sunday.
