Just spoke with an administration official about the President’s decision to fire the BLS commissioner. Some takeaways:

1. The firing was due to what the White House sees as a “pattern of incompetence.” The possibility of firing her had been on the President’s radar for months.
2. The official conceded that yes, revisions to the data are normal. But the White House says this is about the scale in which revisions had to be made during McEntarfer’s tenure.

They described today’s downward revisions as “pretty significant.”

In a long monologue in the Oval Office beside Canadian PM Mark Carney, the President appears to say the trade "deals" his team are working on are not deals in the traditional sense, as they will not have to be signed.

More in thread. He says the U.S. does not care about accessing foreign markets. "We don't care about their market. They want a piece of our market," he says.

The "deal" will be naming the "price that people are going to have to pay to shop in the United States."

Final countdown: We’re about eight hours away from the U.S. imposing hefty steel and aluminum tariffs on some of its closest allies unless Trump decides to let them off the hook. A look at where things currently stand: politi.co/2JG1jiK The countries awaiting their fate are Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Australia, Brazil and the EU. They were granted a temporary exemption from the duties (25% on steel, 10% on aluminum) that Trump imposed on the rest of the world last month. But that expires at midnight.