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Fortune: Even if you can’t trust the data, these 13 warning signs will tell you the economy is in trouble

For decades, statistics that came directly from the U.S. government, especially from agencies like the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), have long been the gold standard for measuring the health of the American economy. But this trust has been shaken by recent events, including substantial downward revisions to jobs data, bruising political accusations, and the unceremonious dismissal of Erika McEntarfer, the BLS’s top official, at the beginning of the month. The resulting uncertainty has left many Americans asking: If official government data can’t be trusted, how can you know if the economy is struggling?
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So this invites the question: If you cannot trust official numbers, what concrete signs reveal economic trouble? Economists point to several alternative indicators that, individually and collectively, offer insight—often visible without needing to consult official statistics. Here are the telltale signs the average person, or a skeptical observer, should watch for

Beyond the numbers: Recognizing economic distress

1. Labor market conditions
2. Consumer behavior and social signals
3. Business activity
4. Alternative and composite data
5. Public mood and media reporting

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Fortune: AI experts return from China stunned: The U.S. grid is so weak, the race may already be over

“Everywhere we went, people treated energy availability as a given,” Rui Ma wrote on X after returning from a recent tour of China’s AI hubs.

For American AI researchers, that’s almost unimaginable. In the U.S., surging AI demand is colliding with a fragile power grid, the kind of extreme bottleneck that Goldman Sachs warns could severely choke the industry’s growth.
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Meanwhile, David Fishman, a Chinese electricity expert who has spent years tracking their energy development, told Fortune that in China, electricity isn’t even a question. On average, China adds more electricity demand than the entire annual consumption of Germany, every single year. Whole rural provinces are blanketed in rooftop solar, with one province matching the entirety of India’s electricity supply.
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James Eagle: Europe’s diplomatic counterstrike

European leaders did something remarkable this weekend. One after another, they announced they would stand beside Zelensky in Washington.
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If Trump could force Ukraine’s surrender in a closed-door meeting, he would establish a new rule. America decides. Europe obeys. The post-war order would be dead.

So Europe acted. Not with diplomatic protests. Not with angry statements. With action that Trump couldn’t refuse: they announced their attendance to Monday’s meeting in rapid succession. Trump faced an impossible choice. Accept them all or reject the entire European alliance.

The White House claims the European leaders were invited, but the sequence of events tells a different story. No formal invitations appear to have been issued. Instead, European capitals began announcing their attendance in rapid succession, creating a diplomatic fait accompli.
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Michael B. G. Froman: After the Trade War

Remaking Rules From the Ruins of the Rules-Based System

The global trading system as we have known it is dead. The World Trade Organization has effectively ceased to function, as it fails to negotiate, monitor, or enforce member commitments. Fundamental principles such as “most favored nation” status, or MFN, which requires WTO members to treat one another equally except when they have negotiated free-trade agreements, are being jettisoned as Washington threatens or imposes tariffs ranging from ten to more than 50 percent on dozens of countries. Both the “America first” trade strategy and China’s analogous “dual circulation” and Made in China 2025 strategies reflect a flagrant disregard for any semblance of a rules-based system and a clear preference for a power-based system to take its place. Even if pieces of the old order manage to survive, the damage is done: there is no going back.
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Patricia J Wentzel: Sounding the Alarm Part 1

Lock them all up!

This week I’m giving you something a little different: three posts in response to the President’s Executive Order “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets” which offers a barbaric solution to homelessness: lock them all up.

To understand the implications of the order, it is helpful to know a few things about homelessness especially in regards to people with mental health and substance use disorders among the homeless. California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness, a landmark study of homeless people by UCSF’s Margot Kushel in 2021, conducted interviews with people living on the streets throughout California. The study found that “Even if the cause of homelessness was multifactorial, participants believed financial support could have prevented it. Seventy percent believed that a monthly rental subsidy of $300-$500 would have prevented their homelessness for a sustained period.” This points to the unsustainability of rents in California that are driving poor people into homelessness.
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Adam Kinzinger: How Trump Is Undermining the National Guard—and America

As a former Guardsman, I’ve seen the damage this kind of abuse can do—both to the soldiers and to the country.
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I served in the National Guard. I know what it means when that activation call comes in. It’s not just a change in plans for the weekend—it upends lives. Guardsmen are citizen-soldiers. They have civilian jobs, family responsibilities, and community commitments. Many are single parents who must suddenly scramble to find childcare, miss paychecks, or rely on friends and family to hold their lives together while they are away. When they answer the call for a hurricane, a wildfire, a flood, or a war zone overseas, they do it because those missions serve the public good. They put their personal lives on hold for something larger than themselves. But when they are ordered to stand on street corners in American cities to serve the political optics of a president looking to project strength and dominance, that is an abuse of their service and their oath.

These deployments don’t just disrupt the lives of those currently serving; they corrode the very foundation of the National Guard’s relationship with the public. Recruitment in the Guard is already facing serious challenges. The next generation of young Americans is not looking to enlist in order to confront peaceful protesters or to patrol neighborhoods at the whim of a president’s political calculations. When service becomes synonymous with suppressing dissent, the pipeline of willing and capable recruits will dry up even faster. And once lost, rebuilding that trust—and those ranks—will take decades, if it happens at all.
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James Eagle: What’s going on with US jobs data

The US added just 73,000 jobs in July, missing expectations of 100,000. But the real shock came in the revisions: May and June were slashed by a combined 258,000 jobs, marking the steepest two-month downward revision on record outside the pandemic. The three-month average collapsed to 35,000 – less than one-third the pace of a year ago.

Trump’s response? Fire the commissioner and claim, without evidence, that the numbers were “rigged”. Here’s the reality: revisions are normal. Early job reports rely on large firms that respond quickly. Smaller businesses report later, and they’re the ones suffering most. When their data arrives, numbers get revised down. That’s statistics, not conspiracy.

The underlying data is grim. Health care and social assistance accounted for 94% of July’s job growth. Average weeks unemployed hit 24.1, the highest since April 2022. The US economy has just slowed, and the jobs numbers reflect this.
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Justin Glawe: Crime is down. But Trump’s authoritarian power grabs are escalating.

Random street crimes are being used as pretexts for repression.

The White House has seized on two unrelated incidents of street crime as a pretext for a federal government power grab at a time when violent crime has in fact dropped across the country.

The attempted carjacking of Edward “Big Balls” Coristine in Washington DC and a street brawl in Cincinnati are the latest cause célebrè on the American right, which has long supported Donald Trump’s plans for military and law enforcement crackdowns in largely Democratic cities. Both incidents are being used as anecdotal evidence of out-of-control crime across the country — a narrative that is necessary for Trump and Republicans to maintain their grip of fear on their MAGA base.

And it’s worked: a Gallup poll in October found that 64 percent of Americans believed crime had gone up in 2024, but new data from the FBI shows that is not the case. In fact, 2024 saw the lowest levels of violent crime since 1969, with violent crime down 4.5 percent across the country, including a 14.9 percent drop in murders.
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Anne Applebaum: How to end the war in Ukraine

The war will be over when Putin understands that he can’t win

Next week, maybe, there might be a meeting between President Putin and President Trump. Once again, many people are speculating about the end of the war, what it would take for both sides to stop fighting. As it happens, this was the subject of a conversation I had a few weeks ago with a Russian journalist, Konstantin Eggert, who works for Deutsche Welle, Germany’s international media company. When I first met him, Konstantin worked for Kommersant, which used to be one of Russia’s best newspapers. Now, like so many other Russians I know, he’s in exile. The interview was made for DW’s Russian-language audience, but it’s been posted in English as well.

The most important argument is worth repeating, now, before the speculation grows more intense: This is not a war for territory. Putin doesn’t need another hundred square kilometers of Donetsk province. His goals are ideological. He wants to to destroy all of Ukraine, to make Ukraine part of a new Russian empire or sphere of influence and to use that victory to undermine NATO and the European Union. As recently as June 20, he said that “all of Ukraine” belongs to Russia. Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti, published two articles on July 30 arguing that “no one should remain alive in Ukraine” and “Ukraine will end very soon.” Right now, Putin still thinks he can achieve those goals. Until he is convinced otherwise, he will continue fighting.
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NY Times: These Are Drug Cartels Designated as Terrorists by the U.S.

President Trump has signed an order telling the Pentagon to begin using military force against certain criminal gangs that the United States has named terror organizations.

President Trump’s directive to the Pentagon to begin using military force against certain Latin American gangs and cartels has turned a spotlight on those groups and raised a host of questions about legal issues, U.S. intervention abroad and which organization might be targeted.

It remains unclear what plans the Pentagon is drawing up for possible action, and where any potential military operations might take place. Mexico’s president said on Friday that U.S. military action in her country is “absolutely ruled out.”
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