Stocks fell sharply on Wall Street during trading on Friday, with all three main indexes closing down significantly after President Donald Trump unveiled his sweeping new tariff plan, which targets 92 countries with new rates.
Trump signed executive orders to impose tariffs ranging from 15 to 41 percent on goods from dozens of countries on Thursday, hours before his self-imposed August 1 trade deadline. Markets also declined across Europe and Asia.
Exacerbating losses in the U.S. was the release of weak U.S. Labor Department jobs data, which showed that American employers added only 73,000 jobs last month, lower than expected, with data from previous months revised dramatically downward.
Trump raged against the new numbers, baselessly calling them “RIGGED” and fired the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, labeling her a Biden appointee.
The U.S. dollar index rose 0.1 percent on Friday morning as Trump reignited his trade war, but fell 1.09 percent against a basket of currencies in response to the jobs numbers.
Defending the latest economic data, White House economic adviser Stephen Miran admitted the jobs report “isn’t ideal,” but claimed tariff uncertainty was “all resolved now.”
Watch: Trump claims he will replace Labor statistician with someone ‘honest’
Oliver O’Connell1 August 2025 22:55
Might Canada walk away from DC trade talks?
Canada could walk away from trade talks with the U.S. after Washington imposed a 35 percent tariff on certain Canadian goods, an adviser to Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Friday.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday, increasing tariffs on Canadian products not covered by the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement from 25 percent to 35 percent. The White House cited Canada’s alleged failure to curb fentanyl smuggling and address U.S. concerns over trade barriers as justification.
Flavio Volpe, a member of Carney’s hand-picked Council on Canada-U.S. Relations, confirmed to CBC News that Canadian negotiators remain in Washington for the time being.
“Team Canada is still in Washington working on a deal and they’re going to be there until we either have a conclusion of a good deal for Canada or that it’s time to take a pause and walk away,” said Volpe, who also serves as president of Canada’s Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association.
Prime Minister Carney seeks a new agreement to reset bilateral relations, stating that Trump’s tariff imposition has “irrevocably upended” the decades-old trading and security ties between the two nations. However, talks have yielded little progress so far.
Washington is also reportedly displeased with Canada’s refusal to drop its own countermeasures, initially imposed by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whom Carney replaced after winning an April election on a platform of standing up to Trump.
In June, Carney had threatened to ramp up counter tariffs in July unless there was progress on the deal. A statement he issued early on Friday did not mention retaliation.
With reporting from Reuters
Oliver O’Connell1 August 2025 22:45
Watch: Trump addresses jobs report in gaggle with White House reporters
President Donald Trump answered questions from White House reporters as he departed for a weekend of golf.
Asked about the weak jobs report today, the president claims the economy is doing “so well” and the numbers were “phony,” so he fired the official responsible, Dr. Erika McEntarfer.
Asked whether, going forward, anyone should trust the numbers, Trump repeated a conspiracy theory about the jobs numbers before the election, which were subsequently revised down.
Oliver O’Connell1 August 2025 22:30
Trump’s first term head of Labor Statistics calls firing ‘totally groundless’
President Donald Trump’s first-term appointee to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics has called the firing of his successor “totally groundless,” saying it sets a “dangerous precedent and undermines the statistical mission of the Bureau.”
He cosigned a letter condemning the president’s move, along with other friends of the bureau, that calls on Congress “to respond immediately, to investigate the factors that led to Commissioner McEntarfer’s removal, to strongly urge the Commissioner’s continued service, and ensure that the nonpartisan integrity of the position is retained.”
Oliver O’Connell1 August 2025 22:23
Trump accused of carrying out ‘Newspeak project’ with threat to official statistics
In response to the firing of Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman issued the following statement, referencing “Newspeak,” the official language of Oceania in George Orwell’s 1984, designed to control citizens:
“Trump has made a career of calling up down, and calling the truth a lie. But the threat to the integrity of the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the trusted source of objective, factual information about the state of the economy — is a Newspeak project of a whole other level and will undermine not just public understanding but evidence-based policymaking altogether.
“As with so much else under Trump, this move is profoundly troubling, but not surprising. Authoritarians always try to control and dominate the information landscape to undermine opposition to their harmful policies.
“Yet again, to advance his narrow, personal and political interests, Donald Trump is undermining the interests of the United States and leaving us a weaker and more vulnerable nation.”
Oliver O’Connell1 August 2025 22:20
GOP senator says not statistician’s fault if numbers aren’t what Trump hoped for
Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming weighed in on the firing of Erika McEntarfer, the director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, by President Donald Trump over his displeasure with the weak jobs numbers for July.
“I think it’s kind of impetuous to fire the statistician without first knowing whether the numbers are inaccurate. It’s not the statistician’s fault if the numbers are accurate and that they’re not what the President had hoped for.”
Oliver O’Connell1 August 2025 22:14
Trump says he has several people in mind to lead Bureau of Labor Statistics
In a gaggle with reporters on the South Lawn before leaving for Bedminster, his New Jersey golf club, President Donald Trump says he has several names in mind to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The president says he has had concerns about revisions to the jobs reports for a while and says, “We need someone honest” to lead the agency.
He also said he will release the list of donors for the planned White House Ballroom project, but suggested he might pay the $200 million cost himself.
Oliver O’Connell1 August 2025 22:06
Democrats slam Trump for firing Bureau of Labor Statistics director
Senate Democrats have swiftly condemned the dismissal of Erika McEntarfer, the director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, warning that the move shows President Donald Trump is behaving like a dictator.
Speaking on the Senate floor, Democratic leader Senator Chuck Schumer said: “Donald Trump sometimes admires dictators, he admires them. Well, he sometimes acts just like them. It’s classic Donald Trump. When he gets the news he doesn’t like, he shoots the messenger.”
Other Senate Democrats said it showed Trump was not facing up to the realities of the economy.
“This is the act of somebody who is soft, weak and afraid to own up to the reality of the damage his chaos is inflicting on our economy,” said Senator Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.
With reporting from the AP
Oliver O’Connell1 August 2025 22:05
Trump talks trade, tariffs and the Fed as he departs White House
As President Donald Trump departed the White House this afternoon on his way for a weekend of golfing at his course in Bedminster, New Jersey, he answered questions from the press on the South Lawn of the White House.
He said that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva can call him anytime to discuss tariffs and other friction between the countries.
Also relating to trade and tariffs, Trump said on Friday that he had heard India would no longer be buying oil from Russia — a major sticking point for him in negotiating a trade deal.
The president said he is pleased that there is an open spot on the Federal Reserve Board after the Fed announced that Governor Adriana Kugler is resigning from her term early.
The Fed announced that Kugler will exit the central bank on August 8, potentially shaking up what was already a fractious succession process for Fed leadership amid difficult relations with Trump.
Oliver O’Connell1 August 2025 21:57
A Treasury Department spokesperson said the post was being reposted because the images attached to it had not uploaded correctly. The spokesperson also noted that the language in the post was in line with what Bessent had said in various media interviews this week.
In an interview with CNBC on Thursday, Bessent said the United States believes it has the makings of a trade deal with China, but it is “not 100% done.”
U.S. negotiators “pushed back quite a bit” over two days of trade talks with the Chinese in Stockholm this week, Bessent told CNBC.
China is facing an August 12 deadline to reach a durable tariff agreement with President Donald Trump’s administration, after Beijing and Washington reached preliminary deals in May and June to end escalating tit-for-tat tariffs and a cut-off of rare earth minerals.
Oliver O’Connell1 August 2025 21:50