Crescent International
In less than a year back in office, Donald Trump has dealt a massive blow to America’s economy and whatever little credibility it had.
As Crescent International noted in November 2024, George W. Bush and Barack Obama inflicted lasting geopolitical damage on the US.
Joe Biden depleted much of America’s soft power.
Trump’s return, however, signals the terminal phase: the end of US economic dominance—Washington’s final card in maintaining the illusion of global hegemony.
As reported by the Qatari regime’s outlet Al Jazeera, Trump’s abrupt firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Commissioner Erika McEntarfer—following job numbers he disliked—sent shockwaves through financial and policy circles.
Condemned as “baseless” by the National Association for Business Economics, the dismissal is widely seen as a prelude to overt political manipulation of official data.
Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman warned the US is sliding into “banana republic status.”
What makes this moment historic is the growing consensus among economists that the credibility crisis Trump has unleashed will likely outlast him.
The 2020s, it seems, are to America what the 1980s were to the USSR: an era of terminal decline masked by denial.
To implement sound economic policies, one needs reliable statistical data to calibrate economic decisions to reality.
Undermining this data is not a minor bureaucratic shake-up—it is a direct assault on the very mechanisms by which modern economies are steered.
When official statistics turn into blatant political propaganda, economic policy turns into guesswork, and markets—domestic and global—begin to price in uncertainty and dysfunction.
In a world still tethered to the dollar and reliant on US signals to gauge economic health, even the perception of data tampering can trigger capital flight, investor panic, and long-term reputational damage.
In Trump’s defense, this is not the first time US economic data has been manipulated to serve political or ideological ends.
What many around the world don’t realize is that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)—the very institution now under siege—has long employed statistical sleight of hand to distort economic reality.
For example, the BLS does not count individuals as “unemployed” if they haven’t actively searched for work in the past four weeks, regardless of whether they are willing or able to work.
This technicality systematically undercounts the jobless and artificially lowers unemployment figures, producing a sanitized narrative of economic strength.
As trust in US data and institutions erodes, so too does the practical authority of America to enforce its economic diktats abroad.
Global economic players—banks, corporations, and even allies—will be increasingly reluctant to tow the line on unilateral US sanctions, especially when those sanctions are underpinned by dubious economic narratives.
Sanctions only work when the enforcer is perceived as both powerful and stable.
If the enforcer begins to resemble a gambler cooking the books, compliance becomes optional.
The era when the US dollar was synonymous with safety, and America was viewed as the greenest pasture for capital, is fading.
In a multipolar world where rationality and predictability are the ultimate currencies of business, investors will seek environments governed by data integrity, not executive tantrums.
It should be noted that the “novel” approach of firing producers of economic data is not so novel after all.
It was standard practice in the Soviet Union—and we all know how that ended.
The global majority, which has been on the receiving end of US imperialism will surely not be disappointed by America’s demise.
For the Global South, the fall of US economic credibility marks a long-awaited shift.
As the empire undermines its own institutions from within, its adversaries need only watch—and wait.
In the end, empires don’t just fall from external pressure.
They implode when they begin lying to themselves.
And under Trump, America is doing just that—loudly, proudly, and perhaps, irreversibly.
A Grand Delusion: Democracy and Economic Reform in Egypt by Eberhard Kienle. Pub: I B Taurus, London & New York, 2001. Pp: 274. Hbk: $24....
