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WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is withdrawing the nomination of E.J. Antoni to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, according to a White House official and an AP source who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the action, which has yet to be publicly announced.
The White House official declined to say the reasons for withdrawing the nomination, only to say that Antoni was a talented economist and that President Donald Trump plans to announce a new nominee soon. The Senate received paperwork formally withdrawing Antoni’s nomination on Tuesday.
Antoni’s nomination, announced in August, was an attempt by Trump to gain greater control over the federal agency responsible for producing key economic data, including the monthly jobs report and consumer price index, which is used to measure inflation. As the chief economist at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, he was a major critic of the BLS. Yet most economists saw him as overtly partisan and warned that his basic misreads on recessions, import prices and other measures made him a risk to lead the federal agency.
Kyle Pomerleau, a tax expert for the conservative American Enterprise Institute, wrote on X after Antoni’s nomination in August: “There are a lot of competent conservative economists that could do this job. E.J. is not one of them.”
Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action, said in a statement that Antoni “continues to be one of the sharpest economic minds in the country” and that he “was the right man for the job” at the BLS. But the statement said that Antoni would remain at the conservative think tank instead of taking a job in the government.
Other details emerged about Antoni that caused worry about his credibility as an economic scorekeeper. NBC News reported that Antoni was in the crowd outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. And observers found that the wall art behind Antoni during interviews on TV was of the German battleship Bismarck used by the Nazis in World War II.
Financial disclosures show that Antoni earned in excess of $495,000 for his work at The Heritage Foundation, in addition to other payments for speeches and consulting.
Trump fired Erika McEntarfer as BLS commissioner on Aug. 1 after the July jobs report showed a rapid slowdown in hiring, with job gains in May and June revised much lower than initially estimated.
The White House has maintained that it wants accurate figures after a series of downward revisions to the jobs report, but Trump has said on his social media site that the numbers were rigged to undermine him politically.
In the four months after Trump initially announced his country-by-country tariffs, job gains have averaged less than 27,000 a month. The slowdown was severe enough for the Federal Reserve in September to cut its benchmark rate in hopes of stabilizing the job market.
The White House also on Tuesday withdrew the nomination of Brian Quintenz to join the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as chairman. A White House official, insisting on anonymity to discuss the decision, called Quintenz a trusted ally and said that a new nominee would be forthcoming.
CNN first reported the withdrawal of Antoni’s nomination.
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Seung Min Kim And Josh Boak, The Associated Press
