The government produces many of America’s most important economic indicators. And that data influences the media’s coverage of the economy, which likely colors voters’ views of the president.

These facts have long led partisans to fear presidential manipulation of economic data. Specifically, during Democratic presidencies, conservatives have often sought to dismiss positive economic trends by alleging data manipulation. Last August, Donald Trump accused the Biden administration of “manipulating jobs statistics” to make unemployment look artificially low before Election Day.

Such allegations have always been baseless. Presidents might have an incentive to tamper with economic data reported by the executive branch. But they have always been constrained from doing so by respect for the independence of data-gathering agencies like the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Bureau of Economic Analysis, fear of scandal, and a desire to provide the private sector with clear and accurate information about economic conditions.

But Trump appears uniquely unencumbered by such constraints. His administration is openly contemptuous of agency independence, arguing that the president should boast unitary authority over all of the executive branch’s activities. It also evinces no concern for giving off the appearance of corruption (before taking office, the president established a memecoin that enables any interest group to directly burnish his net wealth). Trump’s constantly shifting tariff threats indicate an indifference to providing business owners with clarity about the economy’s future trajectory, while his entire history as a public figure suggests an indifference to the truth.

All this gives us some cause for fearing that Trump might tamper with government economic data, should it become politically inconvenient. And over the weekend, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggested that he intends to do just that, by altering how the government calculates gross domestic product (GDP) — the total value of goods and services produced in the economy.

“You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said during a Fox News interview Sunday. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it........

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