The US economy will feel the pain if Trump goes ahead with his plan to whack countries buying Moscow’s oil with fresh tariffs on their goods.

"The key channel by which secondary tariffs on buyers of Russian energy could impact the global economy would be through the level of energy prices," says Kieran Tompkins from the consultancy Capital Economics. If the tariffs work, they will cut the flow of Russian oil and gas to global markets.

Donald Trump’s administration is considering additional sanctions on Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’ of oil tankers if President Vladimir Putin does not agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine by Friday. Blacklisting vessels in the fleet would mark the first time the US has imposed sanctions on Moscow since Trump returned to the White House in January.

“The U.S. labor market is steadily losing steam as evidenced by the staggering downward revisions and a declining labor force participation rate,” Bullard added. This slowdown should feed through to hiring and business investment activity, and lead to soft, yet still positive, GDP growth in the second half of the year.”

The firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics is the latest front in the president’s war on objective reality.

This is what the alarmists — the people who have worried that President Trump may seek to undermine the collection of economic data — feared. The big picture: The president's abrupt firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner Friday makes clear that any federal data collector who delivers unwelcome news could lose their job in an instant.