Dem
47
GOP
53
Guess what? Trump officials are censoring government reports that Donald Trump might not like. In a way, this is hardly news. OF COURSE they are censoring standard government reports that Trump might not like. This is definitely "dog bites man" territory, but Politico had it as the lead story yesterday, so it is probably worth discussing.
Specifically, a routine quarterly report about agricultural trade was accompanied by a forecast that the trade deficit in farm products will increase later this year. Trade deficits are anathema to Trump. That is especially the case now that Trump is claiming that his beautiful tariffs will reduce trade deficits, not increase them. So officials killed the forecast.
This is symptomatic of Trump's view of the "truth." To him, the truth is what he wants to hear and what advances his personal goals. Unfortunately, this incident brings up the unpleasant (but likely) possibility that when some department or agency has produced a fact-based report whose conclusions differ from Trump's wishes, it will be quashed. Or worse yet, some high-level official will simply edit it to change the conclusions. In this case, Politico noticed it and raised an alarm, but we may not be so lucky in the future.
The results could be disastrous. Joe Glauber, a former USDA chief economist, said: "Objectivity is really key here and the public depends on it. To lose that trust would be terrible." Farmers and commercial buyers of agricultural products depend on USDA reports and make major decisions based on them. If these players stop trusting the reports, the result could be chaos in some industries that depend on them. All in all, we may be getting to a point where no one takes any government reports or statistics seriously anymore, which could cause a great deal of uncertainty and unnecessary economic harm. Maybe someone could get the cable stations in south Florida to broadcast the movie Trading Places a bunch of times. Now, there's a movie that shows what happens when people make unwise investment decisions based on inaccurate USDA reports. (V)