Your questions about government economic data answered

Make Me Smart

Marketplace

News, Business

4.6 • 5.4K Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2025

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Donald Trump administration officials disbanded two expert committees on economic data this week and suggested altering the way the U.S. calculates gross domestic product. It’s not the first time the administration has hinted at fiddling with important numbers, and a listener wrote in to ask how all this might impact businesses and the market. We’ll break it down. Plus, why is nobody talking about the debt limit? And, congrats to Bill in Ohio on scoring a hat trick!

Here’s everything we talked about today:

“Trump administration disbands two expert panels on economic data” from Reuters
“Can the U.S. delete government spending from GDP?” from Marketplace
“Key House Republican Warns May Debt-Ceiling Breach Possible” from Bloomberg
“Explainer: Why would the US government shut down?” from Reuters
“A campus sign said ‘Tell us something good.’ Students delivered.” from The Washington Post

Join us tomorrow for “Economics on Tap.” The YouTube livestream starts at 3:30 p.m. Pacific time, 6:30 p.m. Eastern.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Jay. Jay. I want some music, yo. I know. I know, I know. With a big sigh.
0:11.3	Hello, everyone. I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today make sense.
0:16.3	I'm Kyle Risdahl. It is Thursday, March the 6th day. Good to have you back or good to have you for the first time or whatever.
0:23.6	We're going to answer some questions from you, our humble listeners, and then we'll end the show with a smile.
0:28.8	Lots of smiles. Even those of you that are not so humble. We'll answer them anyway.
0:34.6	Anyway, don't forget if you have a question, humble or not, that you'd like us to answer in a future episode.
0:39.7	You can leave us a voicemail at 508. You Be Smart.
0:42.9	Our first question today comes from Tim here in Washington, D.C.
0:46.7	And here's what Tim wrote.
0:48.4	How might the loss of economic data impact businesses and the market.
0:54.9	Now, this is something I've been deeply interested in since the Trump administration came in for a variety of reasons.
1:00.8	And there are reasons to be concerned about the, I don't know that loss is the right word yet, but the quality of economic data. So this week, Commerce Secretary
1:13.7	Howard Lutnik disbanded two expert committees that worked with the government on economic data.
1:21.4	And that could potentially, we don't have it yet, but that could mess up the kind of data or the
1:26.8	quality of data that we get into the future. Also, the Trump administration wants to change the way that we calculate GDP. And Lutnik said that he would strip government spending, for example, from the GDP report. You had a very funny blue sky post guy highlighting the story that we did on your show the
1:48.1	other day about, you know, that experts say that would be just a terrible idea and just wild.
1:55.0	Who did that story? Was that Kristen? I don't remember it, to be honest with you. But it was a
1:59.3	good story. You guys should go back and listen to it.
2:01.6	Economists say, experts say it is a bad idea.
2:05.6	And other economists say that it's not possible to do because it's so hard to parse government spending out from everything else.
2:15.1	Because what are you going to do?
2:16.5	Strip out all of the economic impact of SNAP benefits, strip out the economic impact of Medicare and Medicaid funding.
	...

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