Letters from an American - August 1, 2025

Episode Date: August 3, 2025

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August 1st, 2025. Economists have been expressing concern about the accuracy of economic statistics coming out of the Trump administration for months. Cuts to the staff at agencies that collect data have meant that the Consumer Price Index from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for example, contains far more estimates of values than it did before the cuts. With that warning, today's jobs report packed a one-two punch. The numbers showed that employers added only 73,000 jobs in July,

way below the 115,000 economists had predicted. The numbers also showed that the jobs reports for May and June had significantly overestimated the new jobs added in those months. The department revised May's original estimate of 144,000 down to 19,000, and June's original estimate of 147,000 down to just 14,000. As Julian Berman of the Washington Post noted, that's a decrease of almost 90%. The

numbers show that while the jobs numbers have looked good, in fact the economy has been weakening for months. Trump's high tariffs and the chaos surrounding them appear to have slowed growth almost immediately. The only sector adding a lot of new jobs is healthcare, which is not as exposed to trade policy as other sectors. In contrast, hiring and manufacturing fell to a nine-year low in May. Predictably, Trump lashed out.

Although US statistics have been widely seen as the nonpartisan gold standard, Trump claimed that the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, Dr. Erica McIntarfer, had manipulated the jobs report. In my opinion, today's jobs numbers were rigged in order to make the Republicans and me look bad," he wrote. He fired her. Trump also insisted the head of the Federal Reserve, his own appointee, Jerome Powell, should be put out to pasture.

Powell has steadfastly refused to lower interest rates to pump money into the economy, as Trump wants. Trump has no legal power to fire the Federal Reserve chair without cause, and lately has appeared to be trying to manufacture a cause by suggesting a remodeling of the agency's headquarters has been wasteful. But, he wrote, the good news is, our country is doing great. That assurance sounded a little desperate. Today's job numbers showing that Trump's tariff war is hurting the economy arrived just hours after Trump announced the new tariff rates he will be imposing on other countries, although he pushed the start of the levies off until August 7th

so Customs and Border Protection can prepare. The jobs report, firing of the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, and tariff announcement all worked together to drive the stock market downward. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.23%, the S&P 500 fell 1.6%, and the NASDAQ Composite fell 2.24%. Tonight, Trump wrote that Powell should resign.

The jobs report seems to have come as a shock to Trump, who appears to have been absorbed by the growing scandal of his connections to convicted sexual assaulter, Jeffrey Epstein. News broke today that officials from the Federal Bureau of Prisons had quietly moved Epstein's associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, from the Florida prison where she was being held while she served a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking to a new minimum

security prison camp in Texas. According to Michael Kosnar and Raquel Cornell Uribe of NBC News, the Bureau of Pr's own designation policy makes Maxwell ineligible for transfer to a minimum security prison camp because she is a convicted sex offender. The only person who can grant a waiver to that policy is the administrator of the Bureau of Prison's Designation and Sentence Computation Center. It seems likely that Trump had the jobs report and the Epstein case in mind when shortly before one o'clock Eastern time this afternoon he posted based on the highly provocative statements of the former president of

Russia Dmitry Medvedev who is now the deputy chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation I have ordered two nuclear submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that. Words are very important and can often lead to unintended consequences. I hope this will not be one of those instances. Thank you for your attention to this matter. In the Atlantic, Tom Nichols points out that Medvedev is little more than an internet troll at this point, and that U.S. submarines carrying nuclear warheads routinely travel through the world's oceans.

All American submarines are nuclear-powered, Nichols notes. Trump's threat is unlikely to spark a nuclear crisis, Nichols writes, at least not this time, but it is reckless, he adds. Trump knows that a foreign policy crisis and anything involving nuclear weapons is an instant distraction from other news, Nichols writes. The media will always zero in on such moments because it is in fact news

when the most powerful man on earth starts talking about nuclear weapons. Nuclear missile submarines are not toys, he points out. Previous presidents were sober and careful in how they talked about nuclear weapons. But now, Trump has initiated a new era in which the chief executive can use threats regarding the most powerful weapons on Earth to salve his ego and improve his political fortunes.

But if his threat against Russia was intended as a distraction, it didn't work. I can't believe what I just saw," Peter Maluk, President and Chief Investment Officer of Creative Planning, told Jeff Cox of CNBC. This is not healthy, he added. We can't have a set of numbers come out and fire somebody that served under numerous administrations in various roles because you don't like the numbers. Trump's attempts to draw attention away from the news

might have erased awareness of another issue though. Chris Truax, an appellate lawyer who served as Southern California chair for John McCain's 2008 primary campaign, noted that Trump's wild stories, inability to grasp mathematics, and inability to place events correctly into a timeline are key signs of dementia. Truax published an article in The Hill Today titled, Trump's Mental Decline is Undeniable. So what now?

Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.