Stocks Implode As Trump Fires Clown Jobs Chief Over “Rigged Report”... Typo or Government Cover-Up?

Well, August is sure off to a hot start (pun absolutely intended). A truly pathetic jobs report had President Trump channeling his inner reality show host and firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the spot. Yes, actually fired her. And not just any job… the job responsible for reporting the jobs. (We’ve officially entered the inception layer of government irony.) The July jobs report was already a dud at 73,000 new jobs (well below the 104,000 Wall Street was hoping for) but then came the real embarrassment: the government went back and quietly butchered the last two months of data like they were trying to cover up a crime scene.

June got revised from 147,000 jobs to just 14,000. On top of that, May was chopped down from 125,000 to 19,000. That’s nearly a quarter million jobs that somehow slipped through the cracks… like, “oops, we misplaced the population of a small city.” (Makes you wonder, was nobody double-checking the spreadsheet? Did Excel autocorrect “147,000” to “14,000” and they just rolled with it?)

You’d think with all the data scientists, economists, and government analysts on payroll, someone would’ve raised a hand and said, “Hey, this looks off.” But no, we just made up a bunch of job gains and hoped no one would notice until August. It’s hard to tell what’s worse… the actual slowdown in hiring or the fact that the people tracking it are this bad at math.

Of course, Trump wasted zero time pointing fingers… starting with Erika McEntarfer, the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. According to him, she’s just another “Biden puppet” who “faked the numbers before the election… very dishonest, very rigged.” He called the report a “total disaster, should’ve never happened,” and said he ordered her fired immediately. And because no Trump rant is complete without collateral damage, Jerome Powell got dragged into the mess too. He dubbed him “Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell,” and said it was time to “retire him… send him out to pasture. Maybe a nice farm where he can’t raise rates, just chickens. Something peaceful. Very safe.”

And this jobs reporting scandal was all it took to spark a huge red day for the market (one we haven’t seen in a long, long time). The Dow dropped 498 points, the S&P 500 slid 1.5%, and the Nasdaq got kicked in the nuts for 2.1%. This was a full-scale retreat, as traders tried to make sense of a job market that looks more fragile than a 2008 mortgage-backed security sold by Tim Dillon.

Speaking of mortgages… bank stocks led the marketwide withdrawal. JPMorgan fell more than 2%, and Bank of America and Wells Fargo both tanked over 3%. Why? Well, because when the labor market is weak, loan growth starts looking like a pipe dream. And when you’re a bank with billions in exposure, weak job growth means fewer people paying mortgages, fewer new businesses, and a whole lot more missed credit card payments. Apple caught a spare bullet too, dipping around 2% despite stronger-than-expected iPhone sales. Even good news (by the biggest company on the planet) couldn’t break through the doom-and-gloom fog hanging over the market.

But the most devastating fall of the day came over in crypto land, Coinbase shares cratered by 14%, their worst single-day drop since April. The issue is a pretty big one… nobody’s trading. Fewer people buying and selling Bitcoin = fewer fees = less revenue. The company posted $1.5 billion in Q2 revenue, which was pretty disappointing compared to the $1.59 billion analysts. Especially, when you consider last quarter they made over $2 billion. (So yeah, the crypto honeymoon phase is officially over.)

And get this… right as markets were trying to digest the bad jobs news, Trump’s team dropped another surprise. He’s rolling out new and increased tariffs that hit virtually every major U.S. trading partner, including India, Taiwan, and (most dramatically) Canada, whose tariff rate was bumped to 35% (up from 25%). Oh, and if a country tried to get cute by transshipping goods through a third nation? Surprise! Those are getting hit with a 40% penalty too.  (Normally, this would be front-page news… but we were a little busy trying to figure out how 250,000 jobs vanished.)

The White House framed the move as part of Trump’s “Liberation Day” strategy, with most of the tariffs set to kick in next week unless partners come crawling back to the negotiating table. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to put a sunny spin on the whole thing, saying the economy is still strong, inflation’s down, and the tariffs are “raking in billions” to make America wealthy again. (Clearly the market didn’t seem to believe her).

All this flaming garbage has backed the Federal Reserve straight into a corner… and not the comfy kind. Just two days ago, Powell was out here preaching patience, saying the Fed “needed more time” before even thinking about cutting rates. Fast-forward to Friday’s economic faceplant, and suddenly that “more time” has turned into “oh sh*t, do it now.” 

Traders now see an 80% chance of a rate cut in September, a complete reversal from just 48 hours ago when markets had all but priced out any near-term easing. Treasury yields tanked across the board as investors collectively begged the Fed to do literally anything before the whole machine seizes up. At this point, Powell could announce free beer for bondholders and the market would rally. (Just as long as someone acts like they’re driving the damn car before it flies off the road.)

And just to end the week on a WTF note… Reddit, of all places, dropped a blowout quarter. Revenue up 78%, stock up 16%. While the rest of the market imploded, the meme lords cashed in. (Because of course they did.)

So yeah… Friday had it all: a jobs report so bad it got someone fired (because of some obvious corruption), Trump turning up the heat on trade partners, the Fed backed into a corner, and Reddit of all companies delivering the only real “W.” Welcome to August. May your stop losses be tight.

If you read all of this, congrats for having a 10 second attention span (better than me). As always, here’s our heatmap for today.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Apple as mentioned in the article.