Trump follows Argentina in demanding cooked data

But, hey, it’s Trump’s America, and honest, ethical behavior is for those pathetic losers who deserve to be used and exploited. Right?

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump accused a civil servant of sabotaging him without evidence and summarily fired her. In doing so, he stole a page from an emerging market that cycles through inflation surges and debt crises as if it were a national sport. Enter Argentina.

Danish economist Lars Christensen — who has researched emerging economies in Latin America and beyond — dubbed Trump’s outburst as “the Argentinisation of American data.” It’s referring to an instance almost two decades ago in which the Argentine government ousted statistician Graciela Bevacqua. The nonpartisan official had refused to go along with their ploy to doctor inflation figures to shore up the ruling government's odds of triumph in upcoming national elections.

That episode in Argentina’s never-ending economic novella has rippled anew in the U.S. after Trump booted Dr. Erika McEntarfer from helming the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It puts a spotlight on the independent statistics critical to decisions flowing through every level of U.S. society. Diminishing the reliability of such data risks dealing a blow to the U.S. economy that snowballs with unpredictable consequences…

At INDEC, credibility that took generations to build was lost in just a few years. The Economist magazine stopped publishing INDEC’s statistics and labeled them “bogus.” Argentines treated the data as no better than garbage. Investors fumbled in the dark, driving up borrowing costs…

Arturo Porzecanski, a research fellow at American University who has closely tracked Argentina's economy, said its society is still paying the costs from a near-decade of financial blindness: Citizens, businesses, and investors alike. - Quartz

Talks on a plastics treaty keep going nowhere

This was predictable, these days. Big Plastics is a powerful entity, and like all the Bigs is ethically bereft in every way.

Diplomats from around the world concluded nine days of talks in Geneva — plus a marathon overnight session that lasted into the early hours of (August 15) — with no agreement on a global plastics treaty…

Signs of a logjam were apparent even within the first few days of the talks, however, as countries hewed to the same red lines they’d stuck to during previous negotiations. A so-called “like-minded group” of oil-producing countries said it would not accept legally binding obligations and opposed a wide range of provisions that other nations said were essential, including controls on new plastic production, as well as mandatory disclosures and phaseouts of hazardous chemicals used in plastics. - Grist

It's hard to see the economy not tanking

I generally agree with David Dayen, and I certainly do so here.

Most of this picture is mixed and influenced by a bunch of different factors. But we can say one thing definitively: Hiring has been relatively dormant since Trump took the oath of office. Only 597,000 jobs have been added in the first seven months of the year, a 44 percent drop from the first seven months of 2024, as former Biden economist Heather Boushey notes. The year has seen low hiring and a low quit rate, as people hunker down in the jobs they have. There are fewer entry-level positions and Americans aren’t moving very much for work. That’s a housing story but it’s also a job security story, and the expectations are even worse: The University of Michigan survey shows expectations for a higher unemployment rate next year at the highest level since the Great Recession…

The insecurity gripping American workers has kept wages stagnant, up just 0.1 percent last month. (It took the Wall Street Journal editorial board, of all places, to point this out.) That means that wages aren’t keeping pace with prices, which is what really matters with the cost of living.

On top of this, a host of nontariff policy changes are squeezing or poised to squeeze ordinary Americans. The Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker now estimates that the median health insurance plan in the Affordable Care Act marketplaces is going up 18 percent in 2026, and that understates the impact, because the expiration of enhanced ACA premium subsidies will make this feel much worse. Student loan payment resumption bites so deep for the millions of student borrowers that many are just ignoring the bills, which is likely to lead to intrusive collections and garnishing of wages. The Big Tech obsession, fueled by the Trump administration, to frantically build data centers (and keep the stock market high) is leading to soaring electricity prices, which Trump’s policy to kill any renewable source of energy will only worsen. - The American Prospect

Lots of job cuts are planned

The article does include the appropriate caveats. But this looks highly likely to happen.

Companies based in the U.S. announced in July that they plan to eliminate a record number of jobs, more than double the amount announced in the same month last year, according to a new report.

The report, from recruitment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, tracks U.S.-based employers’ announcements about layoffs, which do not indicate the number of job losses that have occurred or when the positions will be eliminated. The estimates can change based on a variety of factors, including, in the case of government layoffs, litigation, explained Gbenga Ajilore, chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

“These are job cut announcements versus actual people losing a job,” Ajilore told Truthout…

So far this year, employers have announced plans to cut more than 800,000 jobs, the highest number since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has eliminated thousands of federal jobs, was the number one reason cited by employers for their planned job cuts. Experts estimate that DOGE’s actions may end up costing the United States billions of dollars. - Truthout

US pushes dirty LNG on Europe

This is an ongoing thing.

UPDATE 7/29/2025: On July 28, the U.S. and EU announced a framework trade deal. It involves the EU pledging to buy $750 billion in U.S. oil, LNG, and nuclear fuel by 2028. Energy analysts have called that goal unrealistic, with unclear implications for the EU’s methane pollution standards.

As Europe races toward a U.S. trade deal, lobbyists for America’s biggest natural gas exporters are pushing to carve a major loophole in the EU’s methane rules, using ongoing trade and tariff disputes in a campaign to weaken Europe’s climate standards.

“It’s very clear that the industry and the State Department are putting a lot of pressure on the EU to just give us a pass on this methane rule and commit to our dirty LNG,” said Lorne Stockman, research co-director for Oil Change International and co-author of a new report detailing climate impacts from five U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects.

“And we certainly hope the EU does not buckle to that pressure. But it’s extremely concerning because there’s a lot at stake.” - DeSmog

Health insurance greedheads have it their way

Given that there’s no good reason for these companies to even exist…

The seven largest publicly traded U.S. health insurance companies made a collective $71.3 billion in profits last year, and their CEOs took home a total of $146.1 million in compensation, according to an analysis released Wednesday by an ex-industry executive.

Wendell Potter, a former vice president for corporate communications at Cigna who now leads the nonprofit Center for Health and Democracy, compiled the data ahead of his recent testimony before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

As Potter detailed for his newsletter, Health Care un-covered, the companies—UnitedHealth, CVS/Aetna, Cigna, Elevance, Humana, Centene, and Molina—boosted their profits by more than half a billion dollars from 2023 to 2024. - Common Dreams

Trump's tariff stupidity and small businesses

Most media attention is focused on big corporations, but this arguably matters more.

As of 2023, of those U.S. companies that import goods, more than 97% of them were small businesses. For these companies, tariff uncertainty isn’t just frustrating – it’s paralyzing…

The data backs up our anecdotal experience: More than 70% of small-business owners say constant shifts in trade policy create a “whiplash effect” that makes it difficult to plan, a recent national survey showed.

Unlike larger organizations with teams of analysts to inform their decision-making, small-business owners are often on their own. In an all-hands-on-deck operation, every hour spent focusing on trade policy news or filling out additional paperwork means precious time away from day-to-day, core operations. That means rapid trade policy shifts leave small businesses especially at a disadvantage. - The Conversation