'Inability to understand economics': Conservative economists turn on Trump's new nominee

President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, E.J. Antoni, is getting hit by critics across the political spectrum, including a number of prominent conservative economists who say the new Labor chief is “utterly unqualified.”

“He has either shown a complete misunderstanding of economic data and principles, or he’s showing a willingness to treat his audience with contempt and mislead them,” said Kyle Pomerleau, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, speaking with The New York Times.

Antoni was nominated by Trump on Monday to head the BLS after firing its former commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, following the release of an abysmal jobs report that showed the weakest job growth since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

And while Trump has proclaimed that Antoni will ensure job numbers coming out of the agency would be “honest and accurate,” critics, many of them conservative of GOP-aligned, aren’t sold on Trump’s latest cabinet pick.

“I've been on several programs with (Antoni) at this point and have been impressed by two things: his inability to understand basic economics and the speed with which he's gone MAGA,” wrote Dave Hebert, a senior research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, in a social media post on X. “I can only hope the Senate blocks this.”

Antoni is the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think-tank behind Project 2025, but has no background in labor economics. Aside from conservative economists, Antoni’s nomination has also earned the scorn of more progressive critics, including The Nation’s Chris Lehmann, who argued the nomination was just the latest example of Trump consolidating power.

“Killing the messenger who brandishes bad economic news is only half the battle for the ambitious MAGA fateful; to really get things rolling, you need to promote a practiced bootlicker into the new policy void,” Lehmann wrote Thursday.

“And this is where central casting appears to have unearthed Antoni, who is basically the economics version of Chris Rufo – a mendacious talking head who will do virtually anything to distort the basic terms of inquiry in order to arrive at an ideologically predetermined outcome.”