The New York Times reported late today President Trump did NOT like the results of national job losses and weak growth reflected in the numbers released this afternoon by the Bureau of Labor.

President Trump unleashed his fury about the weakness in the labor market on Friday. The President’s reaction was typical, over-the-top, claiming without evidence and any reality checks, that the Bureau of Labor data were “rigged”…

Trump instructed his minions to fire the Senate-confirmed Department of Labor official Erika McEntarfer and Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who is responsible for reporting on national job results and changes reflected in new hires and job losses.

Erika McEntarfer is an American labor economist who served as the 16th Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).  She has over 20 years of experience as a professional economist in several key federal government roles, primarily at the U.S. Census Bureau, as well as at the Department of Treasury and the White House Council of Economic Advisors

McEntarfer academic credentials are impeccable, and include a bachelor’s degree in social science from Bard College and a Ph.D. in Economics from Virginia Tech.

At the Census Bureau, she led research initiatives for the Longitudinal Employer–Household Dynamics program, which produces cutting-edge workforce statistics.

In the White House, she played a crucial role advising officials on labor market trends and recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Her research covers topics such as job loss, wage rigidity, and interactions between employers and workers, and she has published in several leading economics journals — in short, unlike Trump’s appointments in key Federal agency positions, and rubber stamped by the Congressional Republican Party majority in both legislative chambers, Erika McEntarfer was highly qualified for her job, and in her service to the nation.

In a long post on social media this afternoon, Mr. Trump said he had directed (his team) to fire Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who was confirmed on a bipartisan basis in 2024.   Emily Liddel, an associate commissioner for the bureau, wa confirmed late Friday to replace Dr. McEntarfer …who had been fired.

In a one-two economic punch, Hawaii’s economy been negatively impacted by Trump administration policies and reactive-actions on Federal workers based in the state, and by extension their economic contribution to the state.   Official numbers for federal worker firings in Hawaii this year (as of July 30, 2025) are scarce and conflicting. However, several reports and lawsuits indicate that numerous federal workers in Hawaii were affected by firings or layoffs earlier this year, impacting jobs and the economic  contribution they represent to the state’s economy.  

At the same time, high prices and economic jitters are leading the traveling public to pull back on domestic vacation plans in what experts call a move to the “staycation season”.

Hawaii’s highly tourist-dependent economy is not immune in this shift and the potential loss of visitor spending in the state.  The pullback in visitors follows months of economic warning signs. Americans say they are feeling worse about the economy than they have in years, as new and disruptive trade and immigration policies take hold nationally. Many are bracing for a spike in prices from new tariffs, while others are worried about losing their jobs in a slowing labor market.

Years of inflation, coupled with rising health care, insurance and utility costs, have pinched household budgets.

Airline Travel Outlook

Southwest Airlines, American Airlines and JetBlue have all warned that slowing domestic demand could weigh on profits this year.

Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines, combined, will operate over 40,000 flights annually with more than 8.5 million seats to Hawaii, making them the largest domestic carrier to the islands. In September 2023 alone, there were about 600,000 total passengers (525,000 in economy) from the Continental US to Hawaii, according to Cirium. 

Most Americans (representing the bulk Hawaii visitors) — 56 percent — say they plan to travel less this summer, according to a national poll by SSRS. Many said they were opting for shorter or “more budget-conscious” trips because of financial concerns, with 54 percent saying they would be trying to save more money this year in face increasing economic uncertainties and rising costs.

Breaking News; August 1st

Dow drops 500 points, S&P 500, Nasdaq slide after weak jobs report, Trump’s tariff redux

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order imposing tariffs ranging from 10% to 41% on imports from dozens of trade partners in his latest attempt to reshape the global economy.  The new rates, which Trump sees as benefiting US exporters, unleash a fresh round of uncertainty for dozens of countries, including longtime US allies. It has also raised fears of inflation in the US.

Rates were set at 25% for India’s US-bound exports, 20% for Taiwan and 30% for South Africa. Switzerland faces a rate of 39%. The deadline for a tariff deal with Mexico was extended by another 90 days.  Brazil’s tariff rate was set at 10%, but a previous order signed by Trump placed a 40% tariff on some Brazilian goods, to punish the country for prosecuting its former president, Jair Bolsonaro, for trying to overturn an election he lost and inspiring his supporters to storm the seat of government.   Separately, the White House announced that Canadian imports will face tariffs of 35%, not the current 25%. The order stated that Canada had “failed to cooperate”.

Trump said in a disconnect from the facts, that the new tariffs were going “very well, very smooth.” In an interview with NBC News he added that it was “too late” for the countries named in Thursday’s order to avoid the tariff rates, but that he was open to offers.

The Trump administration views science as a threat; so long to Climate truth-telling and cause and effect science.

Denial and blind ignorance as a new national policy in place of valid and revealing science, especially in the areas covering the increasing impacts climate changes on all living things across the planet, well, is not surprising) and by the new Trump administration should come as no surprise, in an escalating change of America’s well vetted policy and setting national priorities. Going backwards to world of 19th century economic and scientific priorities is just not living and in today’s 21st century work, and that is both dumb and dangerous.!

Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Peak, has served as scientific bellwether in measuring rising planetary CO2 emissions now transforming the Earth’s biosphere. Global heating now underway is threatening the present and future of humankind, and most other living things for that matter.

Increasingly, well established science covering the global heating impacts linked to increasing and accumulating fossil emissions within our planet’s biosphere. The production of dangerous planet heating GHG emissions produced by humans is neither a state secret nor subject scientific speculation, it is simple well documented fact of life in the 20th and now 21st century. A  fact of modern life all too serious to ignore or be denied.   So it makes no sense as national policy that essential science exemplified by the Hawaii’s Mauna Loa monitoring of GHG emissions and supporting real time monitoring and research altogether plays an essential supporting global climate science.

The observatory (near the summit) and is strategically located on the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii, and certainly is a globally-valued asset to entire scientific and climate-focused community.  The Mauna Loa climate-monitoring site been recording the amount of carbon dioxide or other GHGas levels in the air since 1958,providing the world with the longest continuous record of direct measurements of CO2. Most recent findings from the monitoring site reveal a steadily increasing trend in GHG emissions year-over-year.

Why Mauna Loa?

Early attempts to measure CO2 in the USA and Scandinavia found that the readings varied a lot due to the influence of growing plants and the exhaust from motors. Mauna Loa is ideal because it is so remote from big population centres. Also, on tropical islands at night, the prevailing winds blow from the land out to sea, which effect brings clean, well-mixed Central Pacific air from high in the atmosphere to the observatory. This removes any interference coming from the vegetation lower down on the island.

The closing Mauna Loa monitoring station and three other U.S. sites that track greenhouse gases will no less than disrupt a decades-long record of the planet’s changing atmosphere, which is exactly the intent of this action.

The Mauna Loa climate observatory is part of a global network of stations that monitor the atmosphere. The research performed at these labs lets scientists assess changes over the long term, figure out what caused the changes and make better predictions for extreme events like heat waves, droughts and floods. And the stations can help scientists tell which climate policies are working, which are not, and if global warming is accelerating.

“It’s frankly inconceivable,” said Lisa Graumlich, an emeritus climate scientist at the University of Washington and past president of the American Geophysical Union. People know and understand the “iconic” record, she said.

“A lot of the science we do is incredibly complex, and this record is something that can be grasped by everyone.”

“Why, for relatively little cost, would we want to lose that ability?” Dr. Graumlich said.

In 2023, there was a group who thought that the Biden admin (with the passage of the IRA) could direct large portions of IRA funding to ensure a Red State clean energy economy with IRA-funded projects, and in exchange, enlighten hearts and minds.  The flow of IRA funds into targeted and local investments in southern states held the promise for some to change minds (for the better), thus turning Red states into several shades of Green.

Considering the short window of opportunity for change the IRA offered, Democrats gambled this would all work in their favor come the next election cycle and validate what some saw as wishful thinking, and not the political reality of the moment. Directing IRA funds into Red states only diluted the IRA’s narrow window of opportunity in transitioning the nation off its costly fossil fuel dependency and the geopolitical reality.

At the time some of us saw the red state strategy to be wishful policy thinking, its reasoning was flawed from the get-go. An earlier New York Times article; “In Georgia, Republicans Vote to Kill Green Jobs and Face Little Fallout” offers a case-in-point that validates this concern, with a Georgia solar recycling company’s plan (Solarcycle) to hire 1,200 people upended by Republicans in Congress.  

Trump’s “big, beautiful” bill has stopped the Solarcycle factory in its tracks. The legislation, which passed the GOP-controlled House this past week and is now being debated in the GOP-controlled Senate, and would essentially eliminate the essential tax breaks that companies have been planning and counting on to build new wind and solar projects, electric vehicle battery factories and more. Republicans in the House voted to get rid of the clean energy subsidies in order to pay for Mr. Trump’s billionaire-targeted income tax breaks, even if it meant hurting investments in their own districts.

In its current form, the Trump party bill would abruptly end most of the Biden-era bipartisan federal tax credits for zero-to-low carbon sources of electricity like wind, solar, batteries, and geothermal.  Repealing those clean energy credits could increase the average family’s energy bill by as much as $400 per year within a decade, according to several studies published this year.

It’s sad (and alarming) to see the IRA, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity as a national clean energy enabler to see its essential public policy mission abruptly ended without merit or reason, but not unexpectedly. The IRA’s mission is being disrupted and corrupted by Trump Inc., as this case-in-point story illustrates.

A Lost Opportunity

Looking back, IRA money should have been funneled into blue and purple states (especially California with its massive economy, this clean energy market leader is qualified to be an economic driver likely to produce a much greater ROI result in the nation’s investment towards an economic win, and certainly more than many other states less experienced in clean energy projects and deployment.

Certainly, IRA investments in CA (representing the 4th largest economy in the world) is a much better national catalyst and strategy in leading the nation into a clean and self-sufficient energy economy, than expecting to seduce and otherwise convert Red States with IRA funds, no matter how reasonable that may have sounded at the time to some political pundits and strategists.  However, changing embedded cultural beliefs extending back to the Civil War, and placing Big Oil in its place and no longer in the nation’s driver’s seat on energy policy, is indeed a wishful political strategy.  In this case, it was the loss of a once in a lifetime national opportunity to transition America into a clean and sustainable energy economy, and a proactive national climate policy represented best by the Inflation Reduction Act (aka clean energy initiative).

No doubt, President Trump (the oil-gas-coal guy) and the money interests funding him are seeing their wildest dreams come true, in part defined by the Project 2025 playbook and their complete control over Congress. Their eyes, however, are shut to clean energy opportunities, instead they are focused on business-as-usual as the world is rapidly changing. Closed to the costly present and future consequences of continuing to burn fossil fuels like there is no tomorrow, the question is no longer who is paying for the climate bill, but how much and when.

A united and strengthened blue and purple state clean energy economy, especially one driven by science and supported by sustainable and equitable policies is needed now more than ever, as each minute on the climate clock clicks down to zero hour. The unfilled promise of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and its enabling transition of the nation into a clean energy economy may no longer worry or threaten energy interests invested in the deep and dirty energy past, especially when the GOP controlled Senate concludes its business on the subject this week.

Sustainable energy technologies, and the cost-effective economics they offer consumers and society overall (politics aside) a proven pathway forward in an increasingly hotter world. But, this all still comes down to the question of how best to mitigate rising climate costs, impacting everyone, regardless of wealth or who we vote for to solve our national and global problems.

Altogether, the IRA was designed to enable a clean and sustainable energy economy, and so far it has been successful as national policy; advancing reliable, compatible, and sustainable clean energy options in balance with consumers’ pocketbooks and the planet.