By David Shepardson and David Lawder
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House said Wednesday it is proposing to cut in half the delay before executive branch officials can comment on leading economic data releases.
A 1985 directive requires the White House to wait an hour before commenting on employment numbers and data on gross domestic product, inflation, international trade, personal income, and other metrics.
The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said Wednesday it was proposing to reduce to 30 minutes the period in order to ensure a “policy-neutral release of the data” but added that since 1985 “there have been many changes in the way we communicate within and across society, as well as in how the relevant agencies disseminate information.”
In 2019 under then-President Donald Trump, OMB had considered doing away with the delay entirely but received opposition and did not change the policy. OMB said Wednesday that it agrees “that maintaining some delay… continues to be important to maintain the bright line between the release of data and any commentary on such data by Executive Branch officials.”
In June 2018, Trump broke with prior practices with a tweet that suggested a positive jobs report would be released by the Labor Department later that morning.
Trump’s tweet saying he was “looking forward” to the jobs report more than an hour before its release gave financial markets a positive jolt ahead of the release showing 223,000 jobs created in May 2018 with the unemployment rate falling to 3.8%.
Under longstanding tradition, the president and the Treasury secretary are briefed on the employment data the night before their release, typically on the first Friday every month.
The proposed 30-minute delay for Executive Branch comment would apply to the following list of data releases, covering everything from jobs to GDP and home sales to crop production.
(Reporting by David Shepardson and David Lawder; Editing by Alistair Bell)