two things stand out when I look at this chart. First is how evident the 2008 Great Recession, the pandemic drop, and the post-pandemic recovery are in the data. And, given what we know about how this data is collected, that actually makes sense; BLS surveys about 631,000 worksites for their employment data as of the 12th of the month, then revises the monthly numbers as more data comes out. The corrections to the jobs reports in 2008 were likely caused by numbers that continued to decrease throughout consecutive months, while reports late in 2021 showed an economy actively adding jobs as it rebounded from the pandemic. In short: A growing job market has positive revisions, a shrinking job market has negative revisions.

National Review’s Dominic Pino wrote a thorough breakdown of the complex work that goes into producing these reports, noting how variables like seasonal employment patterns, self-employment, and new and shuttered businesses make creating an accurate snapshot of the economy on the first try very difficult. Furthermore, the response rate to BLS surveys has dipped since the pandemic. Ironically, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick fired the team of people who help us know how many people are getting fired, making it even more difficult to get accurate initial estimates.

employment in industries that Trump is trying to boost with tariffs have hit a wall: Since May, manufacturing, wholesale trade, and retail trade — three sectors most sensitive to tariff policies — have lost jobs. Meanwhile, both the rates of nonfarm hiring and workers quitting their jobs are steadily decreasing, showing a labor market that’s getting tighter and tighter.

Instead, this firing looks like a case of Trump injecting us-versus-them politics into another arena that could really benefit from reasonable discussion. Whoever takes the role next will still be attempting a difficult task with dwindling resources, but with the addition of a white-hot spotlight of the political culture war beating down on them.

Saudi Arabia and other producers must cut oil prices, global central banks “immediately” needed to slash interest rates, and foreign companies must ramp up investments in US factories or face tariffs. The EU — which came in for particular opprobrium — must stop hitting big American technology companies with competition fines.

Trump’s demands came amid a frenetic first week in office in which the president launched a blitzkrieg of executive orders and announcements intended not just to reshape the state but also assert America’s economic and commercial supremacy. Tariffs of up to 25 per cent could be slapped on Canada and Mexico as early as February 1, riding roughshod over the trade deal Trump himself negotiated in his first term.  China could face levies of up to 100 per cent if Beijing failed to agree on a deal to sell at least 50 per cent of the TikTok app to a US company, while the EU was told to purchase more American oil if it wanted to avoid tariffs. Underscoring the new American unilateralism, Trump pulled the US out of the World Health Organization, as well as exiting the Paris climate accord for a second time.

This proposal throws a “hand grenade” at international tax policymaking, says Niels Johannesen, director of the Oxford university Centre for Business Taxation at Saïd Business School. The move suggests a determination to “shape other countries’ tax policy through coercion rather than through co-operation”, he adds.

“Those around Trump have had time to build up a systematic, methodological approach for protectionist trade policy and it shows,” says former UK trade department official Allie Renison, now at consultancy SEC Newgate. The approach will be to build up a case file of “evidence” against countries, she says, and then use it to extract concessions in areas of both economic and foreign policy.

The question remains how far Trump is willing to go. The danger of trampling on the rules-based order, says Jeromin Zettelmeyer, head of the Bruegel think-tank, is a complete breakdown in the diplomatic and legal channels for settling international disputes. If Trump were to pull out of a wider range of international frameworks, such as the WTO or the IMF, he warns, then the arrangements that help govern the global economy could get “substantively destroyed”.

Some caution against being awestruck by Trump’s threats or his espousal of capitalism without limits, because his agenda was so incoherent. “What we are seeing is huge doses of American hubris,” says Arancha González, dean of the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po. “We are blinded by the intensity of all the issues put on the table and by Trump’s conviction. But we are not looking at the contradictions. It’s like we are all on an orange drug