Mark Twain summed up his annoyance with numbers, pointing out “lie, damn lies and statistics.”

Later, the chaotic phrase became so deeply embedded in the popular consciousness that it once formed the title of the West Wing plot, an NBC portrayal of the fictional American president played by Martin Sheen.

Now, professional economists and digital austerities worry that mottos may become real-life White House themes. Both in global markets and in public opinion show suspicion of war alertness about Donald Trump’s affinity for the trade war, and the president may be about to turn his famous hostility into truth, contradicting his belief in the civil servants responsible for producing accurate information.

The proposed rule changes have made it easier for the firing of civil servants who are seen as “deliberate subversion of presidential orders” to pave the way for the White House to fire objective data for producing the economy, but their numbers are politically inconvenient.

The Federal Reserve uses statistics released by agencies such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) to formulate inflation policies and interest rates. They also form the basis for decisions made by businesses and investors.

The United States' global reputation as a stable economic force and a reliable partner is on par with its long history of generating accurate data, dating back to the establishment of the BLS in 1884. Experts warn that interfering with the latter, you may sacrifice the risk of the former.

But as Trump explains the shrinking figures of GDP under pressure, economists warn that tariffs could trigger a recession, and the government can use new employment rules to put pressure on workers to “cook books.”

"There are many changes in the civil service that make it easier for the government to try to interfere with the activities of statistical agencies and it has made me worried," said Erica Groshen, an expert in government statistics at Cornell University.

Groshen, former Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), feared that the White House Office of Personnel Management last month proposed a new rule that threatened the future integrity of federal agency figures.

The change will reclassify approximately 50,000 unspecified permanent civil servant positions into the "policy/career" category, according to an executive order signed on January 20 after Trump's inauguration, resulting in their "performance or misconduct" removal.

The exact role of the redefined has not been revealed, but Groshen fears that statistical experts will be in the government's crosshairs.

"Bureau leaders may be fired or plan to release employment or inflation statistics that are not conducive to the president's policy agenda," she wrote in a briefing paper.

“If the president determines that they are interfering in their policies, it can be easier to dismiss, which increases the potential for passive or political loyalty to take priority over expertise and experience.”

Trump regularly doubts the accuracy of economic data when he opposes - calling active BLS positions "forgery" in the Obama and Biden administrations, but they call them exactly when they portray the economy during their first presidency.

Last month, Trump blamed Biden when GDP figures showed economic contraction in the first 100 days.

He told reporters: "Even though we handed over the things, we still had numbers, we turned them around, we really turned them around."

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who is directly responsible for many statistical agencies, suggested changing GDP in a way that could provide more optimistic numbers, but that would mark a departure from established practices and international standards.

dCritics say the just risk of accounting for data institutions adds the U.S. to the category of countries with its economic statistics, openly doubting. Groshen quoted Argentina, whose official inflation figures were rejected by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Greece as false, and government statisticians said miraculously caused inflation to the rate of inflation and could join the EU single currency in the late 1990s, making it "disappear" to make it "disappear" to join the EU single currency.

The cunning of the hands had terrible consequences. The global financial collapse of 2008 pushed the country's economy to a tail spin, forcing it to seek huge loans from the IMF and the EU, only under conditions of tough austerity measures and public service cuts.

The widespread anger at Greek conditions understabilizes institutional parties and leads to support for radical and populist alternatives, including the left-wing Syria, which won power in 2015.

The IMF also condemned Argentina and was deported in 2013 after officials severely underestimated inflation rates over the past six years.

Argentina - one of the largest borrowers of the IMF in history - did not receive another loan from the organization until 2018. Another loan subsequently failed to stabilize the country's economy in 2022, and in 2023, Trump's far-right candidate Javier Milei was elected as a Trump admirer and president, who was elected as a serious experiencing cut to address its ongoing economic problems.

Last month, the fund agreed to provide another $20 billion in bailout for the McLean administration.

dErasmus Kersting, an economics professor at Villanova University, believes that the Trump administration’s sensitivity to economic numbers shows that the Trump administration’s sensitivity to economic numbers shows that it has slowed down the tariff-driven pace, which may follow a similar path.

"I'm going to say that there must be a motivation to cook books, but I don't think it's very easy or feasible," he said.

"The Bureau of Economic Analysis basically needs to be silent or divided and replaced with some other statistical agencies, which will lead to different numbers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is the same."

Crasing said accurate and impartial figures are crucial to helping the Fed's form of voice policy. In their absence, Trump may have more scope to attack Fed director Jerome Powell, who has accused him of not succumbing to a requirement to lower interest rates and being accused of “playing politics.”

Kitty Richards, a former Treasury Department and White House official under the Biden and Obama administration, said data collection was damaged by attacks on federal agencies by Elon Musk under the auspices of informal “government efficiency” or DOGE.

“We should see attacks on government data collection as attacks on journalism,” said Richards, now a senior fellow with IQ Groundwork partners. “Breaking data collection and skeptical about published data is part of a plan to undermine the public’s ability to learn truth.”

Even a temporary disruption in data collection capabilities established by the United States will be a "real tragedy" and lead to permanent loss of knowledge, she said. "You can't go back and fix it. If you have a data series that stretched for 50 years, then it will be cut for two or three years and you will no longer have a data series of 50 years. You've lost your knowledge forever."

Greshen called on government statistics to oppose the proposed changes in the civil service system before they expire 30 days on May 23.

"In a democratic country, you want to give people the right information so they can make the right choice. But if the goal is to undermine democracy, then you want to control statistics to fit your story...you want to promote your own version of reality."