Let’s be clear, the “wagon” in the metaphor is your support and beliefs; the “horse” is a magnetic political personage, such as Donald Trump or Barack Obama or Joe Biden or Zohran Mamdani. Put the two factors together and you will experience “disappointment”.
One of the recent Trump dustups regards the August jobs report. The looming analysis on the state of employment at the time of the fuss was not likely to be encouraging, and wasn’t. So, President Trump dumped Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioner Erika McEntarfer. He nominated E.J. Antoni, a Heritage Foundation economist and fervent Trump supporter, to replace her. Based on his activity since January 6th, 2021, it would be fair to classify him as a Trump zealot, more like Sean Hannity than an economist. His since-deleted Twitter account was littered with inflammatory remarks about groups and Trump’s opponents. He was at the January 6th Capitol riot. In his role as Heritage economist, he was known to distort economic numbers to benefit Trump. His credibility as an honest broker was shattered long ago (see #1).
Quite understandably, Senators Collins (R, Maine) and Murkowski (R, Alaska) were taken aback and refused to fall in line behind Antoni. On Tuesday, President Trump pulled the nomination. Many Senators balked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics becoming The Bureau of MAGA Statistics (Dominic Pino’s phrase). The “Deep State” jargon can only take you so far in refashioning government agencies into mouthpieces of your personal agitprop.
And what about those employment numbers? They aren’t reassuring for the rest of us. Lets’ look under that rug. The August report was, to put it mildly, disappointing, like the May and June numbers (see #2). The economy added a disheartening 22,000 jobs, far below the forecasted 75,000. The unemployment rate rose to 4.3% and the number of unemployed persons increased to 7.4 million. It doesn’t stop there. Job openings decreased from the previous month and the long-term unemployed rose to 25.7%. Not good by any stretch of the imagination.
Maybe to a certain extent, Trump can’t believe it after all his “great trade deals” and his list of sporadic successes of individual plant openings, ribbon cuttings, and promises from various economic actors. Neither could FDR during the Great Depression, but a depression became a Great Depression under his watch. Both men suffered from a form of tunnel vision. FDR believed that feverish government activity would rescue us so couldn’t restrain himself. Ditto for Trump. His acumen in real estate was great for real estate, but not necessarily an advantage in understanding the whole economy. There remains much room in his head for economic illiteracy (Google “Thomas Sowell”).
The reaction can be attributed to bombastic personalities and their attraction to big, flashy events, like a moth to a flame; however, the mundane and fundamental basics of an economy get short shrift. Trump is completely unaware of the serious trade-offs that accrued from his tariff war on the world. He unwittingly recreated the conditions of the COVID shutdowns by disrupting supply chains in his April demand that the world bend a knee. Long-established business arrangements were ripped apart.
Trump now needs easy money to paper over his damage, leading to persistent attacks on Fed chair Powell and the rest of the Fed Board. Of course, easy money after assaults on the supply chain won’t end well, any more than it did after COVID and Biden’s $3.7 trillion infusion in 2021. Here we go again. This time it’s Fox News as cheer leader instead of CNN, MSNBC, and the networks with the pom poms. Hitching wagons can be dangerous if the “horse” is a spirited believer in things that aren’t true. Don’t expect the ride to be comfortable.
RogerG
Sources:
1. Three sources on the background of E.J. Antoni: (1) CNN at https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/30/politics/ej-antoni-nomination-withdrawn-bls; (2) New York Post at https://nypost.com/2025/10/01/us-news/white-house-yanks-controversial-nominee-ej-antoni-to-helm-bureau-of-labor-statistics/; and (3) National Review at https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/the-obamacare-ratchet-effect/.
2. “Payrolls rose 22,000 in August, less than expected in further sign of hiring slowdown”, CNBC, 9/5/2025, at https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/05/jobs-report-august-2025.html?msockid=287a0b967a9564c61c991f537b2f65ee.