“The US government’s economic data makes no sense. It’s a con,” declares David Birnbaum, strategic planner for the global garment export industry. “The United States under Donald Trump is joining the national GDP conmen — and is increasingly paying the cheater risk premium.”
Birnbaum’s words cut deep. His critique isn’t political theatre — it’s a forensic assessment of a nation losing grip on its own economic reality. He accuses Washington of manufacturing an illusion of prosperity, where official data no longer reflects the experience of businesses or citizens. The result, he warns, is a “death spiral”: an America where truth has been replaced by narrative, and where survival for corporations may now depend on quietly relocating beyond US borders.
Unlike pundits driven by ideology, Birnbaum speaks as a pragmatic industry veteran — someone who has witnessed how misinformation distorts global trade and business strategy. His alarm is simple but chilling: the United States is becoming “a nation of economic liars,” a label that carries both reputational and financial penalties.
In his view, the future is already writing itself — one where America is no longer the world’s economic leader, but a “minor import customer” of its own offshored enterprises. The ultimate irony, Birnbaum notes, is that those who once rallied under “Make America Great Again” may well be the architects of its economic decline — “right-wing billionaires who, in their war to make their country an all-white Protestant state, went broke.”
For Birnbaum, this is more than a political moment — it’s a moral reckoning. A nation cannot build sustainable growth on falsified data and selective truth. Once economic integrity collapses, so does investor confidence, industrial trust, and ultimately, the very credibility of the state.
The Credibility Crisis: From data to delusion
The widening gap between official data and economic reality is not uniquely American — but it is newly American. Nations like Argentina, Greece, and China have all faced consequences for data manipulation, often to mask instability or lure investment. The outcome is always the same: credibility erosion, downgraded risk ratings, and soaring “cheater premiums” from global banks.
That credibility erosion is already visible in the US. A recent Reuters survey of 100 top policy experts found that 89 expressed concern over the reliability of federal data — citing falling survey response rates and drastic staff cuts at statistical agencies. With trust waning, businesses and investors are turning to alternative data sources like the Challenger Job Cut Report or ADP National Employment Report to read the true economic pulse. As one economist aptly warned, “You can suppress statistics, but you can’t suppress reality.”
That reality is showing cracks: the US Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded only a 22,000-job increase in August — a stagnation masked by political spin — while the Consumer Price Index rose 0.4% in the same month, its sharpest rise since January. These are not the numbers of a booming economy, but of one straining under its own false optimism.
As a Brookings Institution analysis put it bluntly: when official data loses credibility, it’s not just investors who lose confidence — it’s the nation itself.
