Last week we had occasion to talk about Trump’s successes at home, his successful imposition of the tariff regime and his comparable failure in relationships with friends and allies.

Developments in the past week suggest that domestically Trump may be at a tipping point of sorts. He is now exhibiting a dangerously authoritarian streak. Perhaps the most egregious action was the firing on Friday of the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Erika McEntarfer, after the agency reported weak jobs numbers for July and revised estimates for May and June downward.

Trump has already fired some 18 inspectors-general from various federal agencies without showing any specific cause. This is a Congressionally mandated appointment of people to maintain independent oversight of various departments. Trump has shown time and again that he is not constrained by propriety or convention and will use his powers to settle personal grievances and political scores.

As the world’s largest economy and also home to many of the world’s largest financial markets, there is a certain sanctity about the data the country produces in terms of the labour market and inflation and price indices produced by the BLS, the gross domestic product and consumer and business activity by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), housing market data by the Census Bureau and the Housing and Urban Development Department, trade and international transactions by the BEA and the Census Bureau, government finance by the US Treasury, and monetary data by the Federal Reserve.

This data is used by policy-makers and government agencies who set interest rates, set monetary policy, plan social welfare and unemployment policies and so on. It is used by banks, hedge funds, investment firms, asset managers, credit rating agencies, as well as retail and institutional investors. Businesses and corporations use it to base their business strategies and investment plans and plan their supply chain processes.

Another set of people who depend on it would be the academia and think tanks who conduct economic research, build economic models and evaluate policy options.

Given that this is US data, you can be sure that it is used not just in the US itself, but across the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development countries.

In essence, the engine of a modern society is oiled by the regular availability of reliable and accurate data.

The BLS had reported weak employment growth in the US, where employers had added just 73,000 jobs in July. Besides, the bureau revised employment figures for May and June downward saying that employment in the two months was 258,000 lower than previously reported. Job creation in the last three months was actually the lowest three-month total since the COVID-19 pandemic. This could be the outcome of a weakening economy, but equally it could have been affected by the immigration crackdown.

This infuriated Trump who, without a shred of evidence, accused McEntarfer, a government servant who had been elevated to her position during the Biden administration, of fudging the figures for political reasons. “We’re doing so well. I believe the numbers were phony … so you know what I did: I fired her,” Trump told the media.

Financial markets, banks and corporates are vitally interested in this data and any sense that it is in any way rigged would be disastrous not just for the US economy but markets around the world that follow the US data closely.

McEntarfer’s firing and the suggestion by Trump that data was being manipulated for political reasons has set alarm bells ringing across the world. It is not that anyone believes that McEntarfer did anything improper, but the worries are now that Trump’s bullying may hereafter push officials to manipulate data so as not to cross him.

Associated with this has been Trump’s effort to oust the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jay Powell. His pressure to get Powell to cut interest rates continues and his insults mounted after the Fed held rates steady last week. He has been so angry with Powell that he has come close to firing him, an action that would roil financial markets and undermine the central bank’s independence.

Last week when the Fed refused to lower interest rates, Trump declared, “He’s costing our Country TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS, in addition to one of the most incompetent, or corrupt, renovations of a building(s) in the history of construction!”

In a bizarre action, he had visited the Federal Reserve building earlier this month and accused the Fed of cost over-runs in the $2.5 billion renovation project. Trump accused the Fed of spending $3.1 billion, even after Powell, who was accompanying him, said that that included the cost of another office building that had been completed five years ago. The politics were an echo of the issues surrounding the chief minister’s residence in New Delhi during the AAP government’s tenure.

Another development was Trump’s call to his Justice Department to prosecute former President Obama for treason. Last Tuesday he said at the Oval Office that Obama and other ex-officials must be prosecuted for their role in investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. “He’s guilty. This was treason,” said Trump without a shred of evidence.

The aim was fairly transparent – deflecting pressure from the Epstein files. But in the process he has raised the expectations of his MAGA base that there is a new conspiracy to uncover. As of now there is no proof that Russia hacked and altered the votes in the 2016 elections. Bypassing convention that has long insulated the Department of Justice from the White House, Trump has brought the department under his thumb.

The third area of his egregious actions is the money he has continued to extract from top universities, law, media and technology firms. The administration has used the multi-million dollar funding that universities and research institutions get from federal institutions like the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation or the energy department as leverage.

While negotiations continue over Harvard shelling out $500 million to make its peace with Trump, Cornell University is expected to come up with $100 million in a settlement that would reinstate hundreds of millions in research funding that have been blocked. Brown University has announced a $50 million deal with the government.

Last week UCLA faced cuts of $300 million in its science and medical research funding on the same grounds of antisemitism. The issue is not merely the allegations of the institutions allowing antisemitism on campus. The University of Pennsylvania was pushed to limit the participation of transgender athletes in sports in exchange for restoring frozen federal funds. Universities have been pressured on issues ranging from admissions, to the treatment of Jewish students, students' discipline and gender identity.

A fourth area of his focus has been the US media. By using the force of his office he has extracted money from top media companies. Paramount Global paid $16 million to resolve a flimsy complaint from Trump about an interview in its subsidiary CBS’s “60 Minutes”. In December, Disney paid $15 million over an ABC report for allegedly misreporting something related to Trump. Now Trump is suing the Wall Street Journal for $10 billion for its report on the sexually suggestive letter he allegedly sent to Jeffery Epstein on his birthday in 2003.

He had in 2024 threatened the New York Times and Penguin Random House, demanding $10 billion in damages for articles allegedly defaming him, including one relating to a book critical of him. Attacks have also been made on the Daily Beast, the Des Moines Register, NBC News, CNN and AP. As for the Washington Post, he has targeted its owner Jeff Bezos by urging the US Postal Service to double shipping rates for Amazon. Recently, he signed an executive order to end the government funding to the National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service for purveying “left-wing propaganda”.

The writer is a distinguished fellow with the Observer Research Foundation in Delhi.

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