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    BLS Data on Jobs and Consumer Prices Faces a Test of Trust

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    The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tracks prices and employment, faces scrutiny after several missteps. Some questions have gone unanswered.It has been a rough year for the Bureau of Labor Statistics.The agency — which produces key numbers on inflation, unemployment and other aspects of the economy — has made a series of missteps in recent months, including a premature release of the Consumer Price Index.That has prompted questions about how the bureau, which is part of the Labor Department, shares information and whether it has been giving an unfair advantage to Wall Street insiders who can profit from it. The agency’s inspector general is looking into the incidents. So is at least one congressional committee.At the same time, the bureau — like other statistical agencies in the United States and around the world — is facing long-running challenges: shrinking budgets, declining response rates to its surveys, shifting economic patterns in the wake of the pandemic and increased public skepticism of its numbers, at times stoked by political leaders including former President Donald J. Trump.Economists and other experts say the bureau’s data remains reliable, and they praise the agency’s efforts to ensure its numbers are accurate and free of political bias. But they say the recent problems threaten to undermine confidence in the agency, and in government statistics more broadly.“A statistical agency lives or dies by trust,” said Erica Groshen, who served as commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics during the Obama administration. Once that trust is lost, she added, “it’s very hard to restore it.”The agency recognizes that threat, its current leader says, and is taking it seriously.“We are under more scrutiny because the environment around the agency has changed,” Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the bureau, said in an interview.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Care Policies Take Center Stage in Harris’s Economic Message

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    The Democratic nominee says she wants to make raising a family more affordable. But she has provided few details on her proposals.The “care economy” — a broad set of policies aimed at helping parents and other caregivers — was the great unfinished work of President Biden’s domestic agenda. Vice President Kamala Harris has made it a central aspect of her campaign to succeed him.Ms. Harris, the Democratic nominee, has spoken frequently on the campaign trail about making it more affordable to raise children. She chose a running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, whose signature policy accomplishments include the creation of a paid family leave program.In the first major economic speech of her campaign, she proposed restoring an expanded child tax credit and called for a new $6,000 benefit for parents of newborns. She also laid out policies that aim to reduce housing costs, such as providing up to $25,000 in down-payment assistance to first-time home buyers.In her speech accepting the Democratic nomination on Thursday, Ms. Harris said she would not let conservatives end programs like Head Start that “provide preschool and child care for our children.”But Ms. Harris has not yet offered specific proposals on child care, paid family leave or early childhood education. That has surprised some progressive policy experts, and brought flashbacks of the Biden administration’s inability to enact more sweeping policies.Mr. Biden also initially made the care economy a central piece of his domestic policy agenda, putting it alongside proposed investments in roads and bridges, domestic manufacturing and green energy. His aides often argued that care was a form of infrastructure — that affordable child care, like highways, was essential to a well-functioning economy.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump Dangles New Tax Cut Proposals With Real Political Appeal

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    The most recent and costliest of Mr. Trump’s ideas would end income taxes on Social Security benefits.First it was a tax cut for hotel and restaurant workers in Nevada, a swing state where Donald J. Trump proposed exempting tips from taxes. Then, in front of powerful chief executives gathered in Washington, Mr. Trump floated cutting the corporate tax rate, helping to ease concerns in the business community about his candidacy.Now Mr. Trump is calling for an end to taxing Social Security benefits, which could be a boon for retirees, one of the most politically important groups in the United States.Repeatedly during the campaign, Mr. Trump and Republicans have embraced new, sometimes novel tax cuts in an attempt to shore up support with major constituencies. In a series of social-media posts, at political rallies, and without formal policy proposals, Mr. Trump has casually suggested reducing federal revenue by trillions of dollars.While policy experts have taken issue with the ideas, Mr. Trump’s pronouncements have real political appeal, at times putting Democrats on their back foot. Nevada’s two Democratic senators and its powerful culinary union have endorsed ending taxes on tips. The AARP supports tax relief for seniors receiving Social Security benefits, though it has not taken a position on Mr. Trump’s proposal.“You do have to scratch your head a little bit when someone’s going around offering free lunches everywhere,” said Jesse Lee, a Democratic consultant and former Biden White House official. “We’re all for people having their lunch, but we have to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for it.”The most recent and most expensive of Mr. Trump’s plans is ending income taxes on Social Security benefits, which could cost the federal government as much as $1.8 trillion in revenue over a decade, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. That would burn through the program’s financial reserves more quickly and hasten the moment when the government is no longer able to pay out Social Security benefits in full under current law.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Republican Party Rejects Free-Market Economics in Favor of Trump’s Signature Issues

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    Donald J. Trump’s presidency was a major turn away from the Republican Party’s long embrace of free-market economics. If the Republican platform is any indication, a second Trump term would be a near-complete abandonment.The 2024 platform, which was released last week and is expected to infuse the Republican National Convention that starts in Milwaukee on Monday, promises action on what have become Mr. Trump’s signature issues: It pledges to pump up tariffs, encourage American manufacturing and deport immigrants at a scale that has never been seen before.What it lacks are policy ideas that have long been dear to economic conservatives. The platform does not directly mention fiscal deficits, and, apart from curbing government spending, it does not make any clear and detailed promises to rein in the nation’s borrowing. Other policies it proposes — including cutting taxes and expanding the military — would most likely swell the nation’s debt.The Republican platform also does not mention exports or encouraging trade. And while the document insists that the party will lower inflation, long a pertinent issue for economic conservatives, it fails to lay out a realistic plan for doing that. Chapter One of the document, titled “Defeat Inflation and Quickly Bring Down All Prices,” suggests that oil-friendly policies, slashed government spending, decreased regulation, fewer immigrants and restored geopolitical stability will lower price increases. But few economists agree.In fact, many analysts have said Mr. Trump’s suggestions on the campaign trail so far could lift prices, particularly his proposals to deport immigrants en masse and apply tariffs of perhaps 10 percent on most imports and levies of 60 percent on goods from China.“Measures to reduce migration and to protect the economy through tariffs and trade blockages are all highly inflationary,” Steven Kamin, a former Fed staff official who is now at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said in an interview last week. When it comes to both deficits and trade, he said, there is a “populist dismissal of the prescriptions of academics and elites.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Once a G.O.P. Rallying Cry, Debt and Deficits Fall From the Party’s Platform

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    Fiscal hawks are lamenting the transformation of the party that claimed to prize fiscal restraint and are warning of dire economic consequences.When Donald J. Trump ran for president in 2016, the official Republican platform called for imposing “firm caps on future debt” to “accelerate the repayment of the trillions we now owe.”When Mr. Trump sought a second term in 2020, the party’s platform pummeled Democrats for refusing to help Republicans rein in spending and proposed a constitutional requirement that the federal budget be balanced.Those ambitions were cast aside in the platform that the Republican Party unveiled this week ahead of its convention. Nowhere in the 16-page document do the words “debt” or “deficit” as they relate to the nation’s grim fiscal situation appear. The platform included only a glancing reference to slashing “wasteful” spending, a perennial Republican talking point.To budget hawks who have spent years warning that the United States is spending more than it can afford, the omissions signaled the completion of a Republican transformation from a party that once espoused fiscal restraint to one that is beholden to the ideology of Mr. Trump, who once billed himself the “king of debt.”“I am really shocked that the party that I grew up with is now a party that doesn’t think that debt and deficits matter,” said G. William Hoagland, the former top budget expert for Senate Republicans. “We’ve got a deficit deficiency syndrome going on in our party.”The U.S. national debt is approaching $35 trillion and is on pace to top $56 trillion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. At that point, the United States would be spending about as much on interest payments to its lenders — $1.7 trillion — as it does on Medicare.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    One Obstacle for Trump’s Promises: This Isn’t the 2016 Economy

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    Donald J. Trump slapped tariffs on trading partners and cut taxes in his first term. But after inflation’s return, a repeat playbook would be riskier.When Donald J. Trump became president in 2017, prices had risen roughly 5 percent over the previous four years. If he were to win the race for the White House in 2024, he would be entering office at a time when they are up 20 percent and counting.That is a critically different economic backdrop for the kind of policies — tariffs and tax cuts — that the Republican contender has put at the center of his campaign.Mr. Trump regularly blames the Biden administration for the recent price surge, but inflation has been a global phenomenon since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Supply chain problems, shifting consumer spending patterns and other quirks related to pandemic lockdowns and their aftermath collided with stimulus-fueled demand to send costs shooting higher.The years of unusually rapid inflation that resulted have changed the nation’s economic picture in important ways. Businesses are more accustomed to adjusting prices and consumers are more used to those changes than they were before the pandemic, when costs had been quiescent for decades. Beyond that, the Federal Reserve has lifted interest rates to 5.3 percent in a bid to slow demand and wrestle the situation under control.That combination — jittery inflation expectations and higher interest rates — could make many of the ideas Mr. Trump talks about on the campaign trail either riskier or more costly than before, especially at a moment when the economy is running at full speed and unemployment is very low.Mr. Trump is suggesting tax cuts that could speed up the economy and add to the deficit, potentially boosting inflation and adding to the national debt at a time when it costs a lot for the government to borrow. He has talked about mass deportations at a moment when economists warn that losing a lot of would-be workers could cause labor shortages and push up prices. He promises to ramp up tariffs across the board — and drastically on China — in a move that might sharply increase import prices.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Get Ready for the Debate Like an Economics Pro

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    What you need to know about the economy before Thursday’s showdown between President Biden and Donald J. Trump.President Biden.Doug Mills/The New York TimesFormer President Donald J. Trump.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesMany of the issues likely to dominate Thursday’s televised debate between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump boil down to economics.Inflation, immigration, government taxing and spending, interest rates, and trade relationships could all take center stage — and both candidates could make sweeping claims about them, as they regularly do at campaign events and other public appearances.Given that, it could be handy to go into the event with an understanding of where the economic data stand now and what the latest research says. Below is a rundown of some of today’s hot-button topics and the context you need to follow along like a pro.Inflation has been high, but it’s slowing.Inflation jumped during the pandemic and its aftermath for a few reasons. The government had pumped more than $5 trillion into the economy in response to Covid, first under Mr. Trump and then under Mr. Biden.As families received stimulus checks and built up savings amid pandemic lockdowns, they began to spend their money on goods like cars and home gym equipment. That burst of demand for physical products collided with factory shutdowns around the world and snarls in shipping routes.Shortages for everything from furniture parts and bicycles to computer chips for cars began to crop up, and prices started to jump in 2021 as a lot of money chased too few goods.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    U.S. Debt on Pace to Top $56 Trillion Over Next 10 Years

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    Congressional Budget Office projections released on Tuesday show a grim fiscal backdrop ahead of tax and debt limit fights.The United States is on a pace to add trillions of dollars to its national debt over the next decade, borrowing money more quickly than previously expected, at a time when big legislative fights loom over taxes and spending.The Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday that the U.S. national debt is poised to top $56 trillion by 2034, as rising spending and interest expenses outpace tax revenues. The mounting costs of Social Security and Medicare continue to weigh on the nation’s finances, along with rising interest rates, which have made it more costly for the federal government to borrow huge sums of money.As a result, the United States is expected to continue running large budget deficits, which are the gap between what America spends and what it receives through taxes and other revenue. The budget deficit in 2024 is projected to be $1.9 trillion, up from a forecast earlier this year of $1.6 trillion. Over the next 10 years, the annual deficit is projected to swell to $2.9 trillion. As a share of the economy, debt held by the public in 2034 will be 122 percent of gross domestic product, up from 99 percent in 2024.The new projections come as lawmakers are gearing up for a big tax and spending battle. Most of the 2017 Trump tax cuts will expire in 2025, forcing lawmakers to decide whether to renew them and, if so, how to pay for them. The United States will also again have to deal with a statutory cap on how much it can borrow. Congress agreed last year to suspend the debt limit and allow the federal government to keep borrowing until next January.Those fights over tax and spending will be taking place at a time when the country’s fiscal backdrop is increasingly grim. An aging population continues to weigh on America’s old-age and retirement programs, which are facing long-term shortfalls that could result in reduced retirement and medical benefits.Both Democrats and Republicans expressed concern about the national debt as inflation and interest rates soared over the last few years, but spending has been difficult to corral. The C.B.O. report assumes that the 2017 tax cuts are not extended, but that is highly unlikely. President Biden has said he will extend some of the tax cuts, including those for low- and middle-income earners, and former President Donald J. Trump has said he will extend all of them if he wins in November. Fully extending the tax cuts could cost around about $5 trillion over 10 years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More