WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is withdrawing the nomination of E.J. Antoni to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, according to an AP source who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the White House action, which hasn’t been publicly announced.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Senate received paperwork formally withdrawing Antoni’s nomination on Tuesday, the person said.
Antoni’s nomination was an attempt by Trump to gain greater control over the federal agency responsible for producing key economic data, including the monthly jobs report and consumer price index, which is used to measure inflation. The chief economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation was a major critic of the BLS. Yet most economists saw him as overtly partisan and warned that his basic misreads on recessions, import prices and other measures made him a risk to lead the federal agency.
Trump fired Erika McEntarfer as BLS commissioner on Aug. 1 after the July jobs report showed a rapid slowdown in hiring, with job gains in May and June revised much lower than initially estimated.
The White House has maintained that it wants accurate figures after a series of downward revisions to the jobs report, but Trump has said on his social media site that the numbers were rigged to undermine him politically.
In the four months after Trump initially announced his country-by-country tariffs, job gains have averaged less than 27,000 a month. The slowdown was severe enough for the Federal Reserve in September to cut its benchmark rate in hopes of stabilizing the job market.
The White House also on Tuesday withdrew the nomination of Brian Quintenz to join the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as chairman.
CNN first reported the withdrawal of Antoni’s nomination.
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