The United States labor market shrank in May and June. The following month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported as such. Then, President Donald Trump fired the commissioner of the BLS. The move isn’t just a reflection of Trump’s extraordinary exercise of executive power. It also dealt a major blow to trust in information provided by the U.S—and thus, both to America's economy and wider reputation abroad.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. President Trump has also, for instance, directed the Commerce Department to begin work on a "new" census that would exclude millions of people from the population tally and would leverage "the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024."

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The credibility of the American government's most fundamentally important data, and its word on major issues, is critical both to American prosperity and to allied confidence.

At the beginning of the Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy asked former Secretary of State Dean Acheson to meet with French President Charles de Gaulle to brief him on the reasons for America's blockade of Cuba. Acheson offered to show him pictures of Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba to justify the decision. DeGaulle's response was clear and definitive. "No.No.No.No," he responded, "The word of the President of the United States is good enough for me."

This clear demonstration of trust proved to be an enormous benefit in mobilizing French and other international support for the U.S. vis-à-vis the Soviet Union during this period. In the years that followed, it wasn't always that way. Trust in President........

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