Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Saturday, August 2nd, 2025. This is USA Today is the exit.

Today, breaking down weak job numbers and Trump's response amid tariff tensions. Plus, let's talk about gold in the economy, and the

Corporation for Public Broadcasting is shutting down. After a week of tariff announcements,

President Donald Trump has fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after a report

showed weak job growth in July. I spoke with USA Today, White House correspondent,

Joey Garrison, for more. Thanks for hopping on, Joey. Day, thanks for having me on.

So just starting with the jobs report itself, Joe. I mean, what did we learn from these July numbers?

So the U.S. added 73,000 jobs in July. In other words, employers hired that many additional

new employees. and that was

well short of the expectation, which was about 105,000 new jobs. And so really kind of a dismal

weak jobs report. It's followed two prior months of poor jobs numbers after those numbers were revised. And so,

you know, I think it's for the Trump White House, it's really calling into question the pathway

that they push forward with these high tariffs that he's doubled down on this past week.

And Trump keeps talking about this being a booming economy under his watch,

but some of the numbers right now aren't exactly burying it out. I mean, I think a lot of economists

will argue that employers have held off on hiring because of uncertainty about the economy.

And part of that uncertainty is the impact of these tariffs.

Well, the president followed those numbers up by firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics

yesterday on Friday. Joey, what can you tell us about this move and why he says he did this?

Yeah, I mean, this was a really extraordinary move. Unprecedented, really. He announced in a

truth social post that later talked about it with

reporters that he had fired Erica McIntarfer. This is somebody, of course, who we didn't really know

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