Trump fired the BLS chief. Argentina has a lesson for him

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.

In the U.S., public agencies release reports detailing employment growth, poverty rates, inflation, and more either weekly, monthly, or annually like clockwork. The federal government relies on that economic data in setting Social Security benefits, income tax brackets and more. Then business owners decide when to hire and families draw up a monthly budget based on economic conditions.

Trump, though, lashed out at McEntarfer over major downgrades to the last two months of job counts. Most economists say it’s the product of routine revisions and thinner staffing which has dragged down BLS survey capabilities.

U.S. President Donald Trump in August 2025 (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images).

In a recent interview with Quartz, Bevacqua referred to the McEntarfer firing as a “red flag” for the U.S. that she argues will test the independence of its economic institutions. “A credible, robust BLS has been a model for many countries,” she said, including Argentina.

American Statistical Association Executive Director Ronald Wasserstein drew a comparison to Argentina’s turbulence. “We were just too naive to believe that it would ever happen here,” he said. “We're looking at a very similar situation now.”

“I was fired"

Bevacqua oversaw the team managing the consumer price index at INDEC, Argentina’s independent statistics agency. She spent over two decades at an agency that cultivated a sterling professional reputation in Latin America. The organization put out accurate data even in 1979 when an economic minister in Argentina’s military dictatorship tried masking severe inflation by separately establishing a “meatless price index.”

Story ContinuesINDEC made no bones about rampant, double-digit inflation increases. They published the price measurement wrapping in the Argentine culinary staple anyway.

But it wouldn’t be the last time the state tried putting its fingerprints on official statistics. Trouble brewed for Bevacqua starting in 2006 when newly appointed domestic trade official Guillermo Moreno pushed for access to INDEC's confidential methodology, starting with the specific firms surveyed ahead of the consumer price release.

At one point, Moreno dragged Bevacqua into his office. He called her “unpatriotic” if she didn’t fall in line and release lower inflation figures favorable to Argentine President Néstor Kirchner’s populist government before the next presidential election.

Bevacqua didn’t budge. She said political officials orchestrated “an entire pressure campaign" that included an effort to block the Uruguayan government from offering her a job in their national statistics office. It culminated in her removal from INDEC in January 2007.

“I was fired because I didn’t want to change the numbers,” Bevacqua said. A Kirchner loyalist was installed as her replacement. Argentina later reported that year the inflation rate had dropped from to 8.5% in 2007 from 9.5% compared to the year prior.

Statistician Graciela Bevacqua in Buenos Aires, Argentina in October 2011. (Juan Forero/The Washington Post via Getty Images).

Cristina Kirchner succeeded her husband in becoming Argentina’s president, and her government plowed ahead with producing defective inflation reports that bolstered their agenda. Crackdowns were launched on private sector economists who released inflation readings contradicting official figures. Often, their data showed inflation at double the rate reported by the government. Bevacqua was among the rebellious consultants fending off the threat of jail time and steep fines exceeding $120,000.

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.

The International Monetary Fund stepped in to rebuke Buenos Aires, like a headmaster trying to wrangle better behavior out of a stubborn student. The IMF censured Argentina in 2013 for the grossly distorted state of its data and demanded it start cleaning up their number-crunching. Otherwise, Argentina could lose access to critical loans or even face expulsion from the organization. It was the first time the IMF had penalized a member country that way.

Then-Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (L) waves to the crowd next to her husband and outgoing president Nestor Kirchner as they leave the Argentine Congress in December 2007. (Daniel Darras/Telam/AFP via Getty Images)

Bevacqua eventually beat back the investigations. Under a new government, she was appointed to INDEC’s number two job in 2016. INDEC had shed scores of experienced statisticians. But it regained political independence and began reassembling a once reliable inflation index that lay in shambles.

Arturo Porzecanski, a professor 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. He cited ongoing litigation around the accurate value of contracts with inflation-adjusted clauses still tying up court dockets. Last year, Argentina lost a $1.8 billion lawsuit against four U.K. hedge funds over government securities in which INDEC's previously defective data was part of the proceedings.

A "trust but verify" environment sprouted up from the ruins as well. "Even today, after INDEC's reputation was rebuilt, several private economic consulting companies continue to survey supermarket and other prices in order to verify that INDEC's statistics track closely their own estimates," Porzecanski said.

The next BLS chief

Analysts say the U.S. faces fresh strains on its guardrails. “Everyone expected this from Argentina. It was a country with weak institutions and a history of authoritarian interruptions to democracy,” Christensen wrote in a blog post . “The US’s checks and balances were supposed to prevent exactly this kind of abuse.”

That doesn't mean institutions aren't convulsed into holding political figures accountable. In Argentina, Moreno was sentenced to three years of conditional prison last year and barred six years from holding public office.

As ASA head, Wasserstein in 2012 sent a letter to the State Department to support Bevacqua and other Argentine economists who were in their government's crosshairs. He spoke in blunt terms about McEntarfer’s firing. “We're in a position where others are feeling sorry for us, and that's embarrassing because it's pointless," he said. “There's no reason why this should be happening."

Trump has since named EJ Antoni, a conservative economist, to replace McEntarfer atop the BLS. He has sparked blowback from economists on the left and right who fear he could interfere with the work of professional technocrats assembling the data. Shortly before he was nominated, Antoni suggested suspending the monthly jobs report.

Wasserstein has fielded messages of support from statisticians in Europe and Australia. He argues the next BLS chief should preserve the agency's independence and ensure its properly funded. The U.S. slumping into an Argentina-style statistical decline isn't unavoidable, he says.

“I don't think we've hit a point where it's irreversible,” Wasserstein said. “But I think that we have hit a point where it's going to take a lot of time to recover from the damage that's already been done.”

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