‘Honest and Accurate’: Trump Names His Pick for Labor Data Body
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This podcast is brought to you by ReliaQuest. Cyber criminals are constantly attacking. They want your data. They want your identity. They want your innovation. ReliaQuest fortifies your business with agentic defense, AI that detects, contains, and eliminates cyber threats in minutes. It helps your security team move faster at the work that matters most to protect the business now and delivers insights to help them predict what's next. President Trump announces his pick for the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Plus, with the Trump-Putin summit just days away, Ukraine's fate seems as uncertain as ever.
Putin's goal has always been the same since this war began. He wants a puppet regime in Ukraine, if not the alt-right annexation of all of Ukraine. And so he doesn't see President Zelensky of Ukraine as a legitimate leader, and therefore he refuses to meet with him.
And we look at how Chinese ships are set to dominate the world's seas and ports. It's Tuesday, August the 12th. I'm Azhar Sukri for The Wall Street Journal. Here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. President Trump has said he plans to nominate the chief economist at the Conservative Heritage Foundation to lead the Bureau of Labour Statistics. As we mentioned on yesterday's show, E.J. Antony is a longtime critic of the agency's handling of jobs data. The position requires Senate confirmation. Trump fired the agency's head following a weak jobs report earlier this month, claiming that the agency's economic data was, quote, rigged. Here's our deputy finance editor, Quentin Webb.
What did President Trump announce about his nominee for the Bureau of Labor Statistics head?
There is a kind of bigger picture here, which is that actually response rates for all of the surveys that the BLS and other Yeah. This data is seen as a kind of global gold standard. People trust U.S. data very deeply, and the data helps inform all kinds of decision-making from the Federal Reserve's decisions about interest rates to the pricing of various instruments. So once you start to pull away at that foundation, that could be very problematic for global markets.
Well, after the July jobs report raised some questions about the overall health of the economy, the Bureau of Labour Statistics will give investors another snapshot today. July's consumer price index is due at 8.30am ET. Economists polled by the Wall Street Journal say prices likely rose 2.8% in the 12 months through July. The core reading, which excludes food and energy prices, is expected to come in at 3.1% year-over-year. slightly hotter than June's 2.9% rate. On this week's episode of WSJ's Take on the Week, co-host Telus Demos reflected on how investors are grappling with the prospect of less than reliable economic data in the future.
The last reading was a little hot. It was 2.7%, kind of inching toward 3% that I think starts to spook everyone. We'll see what the next report says. Also, the producer price index, which kind of is a measure of wholesale prices. Similarly, that has not been too hot. It's been running in the sort of 2%. So again, not seeing necessarily the inflation there. And then we have business inventories, which I think that's what I think people will be interested in because the narrative about what's happened with tariffs is that everybody bought up stuff earlier in the year. worrying that the price of it might go up later. And so now everyone's sitting on a big inventory pile. But what's interesting from a market point of view, though, is despite the, I would say, you know, very dramatic discussions we're having about the economy and data, the market has been, you know, it went down a little bit after the jobs report.
It went kind of back up. I think we're sort of still in the neighborhood of all time highs for the S&P. And there are certainly some stocks that the market still seems to love.
And we will have full coverage and analysis Just three days out from a major summit between Presidents Trump and Putin in Alaska, Russian media are reporting on potential energy and infrastructure deals with the US.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–1:50
2
What did President Trump announce about his nominee for the Bureau of Labor Statistics head?
1:50–7:32
3
Why is E.J. Antoni a controversial pick to lead the BLS and what criticism has he faced?
7:32–10:27
4
How could changes at the BLS affect investor confidence and global markets?
10:27–13:17
Speakers
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