The US Government's War on Statistics Is Unlikely to End Well

Disbanding an independent panel of experts is a major mistake

- CLAUDIA SAHM

In a time of great economic uncertainty, US President Donald Trump's administration quietly took a step recently that could create even more: Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick disbanded the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee (FESAC).

Shutting down an obscure statistical advisory panel may not strike anyone as a scandal, much less an outrage. But as an economist who has presented to the FESAC, I know how it improved the information used by both the federal government and private enterprise to make economic decisions. Timely and accurate government data is important.

One of FESAC's official responsibilities was "exploring ways to enhance the agencies' economic indicators to make them timelier, more accurate and more specific to meeting changing demands and future data needs." In the US, this is an ongoing effort, not a one-time task that has been "fulfilled," which was the stated reason for terminating the committee.

The panel's 15 members, who were unpaid, brought deep technical expertise on economic measurement from the private sector, academia and the non-profit world. They were a sounding board for the Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Bureau of Economic Analysis, which produce most official US statistics.