National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett on what the Iran war means for the U.S. economy, high oil prices, inflation, AI disruption to employment and more.
Questions asked in this interview
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0:07Do you think that reflects any impact of the Iran war and the fact that corporations maintained resiliency during some of the geopolitical risk?
1:09Does it get offset by the rising gas prices which are now lasting a little bit longer?
2:10I mean, do you have concerns now that this has spread into places like fertilizer and shipping and diesel that it's more just beyond gas price inflation?
I'm sure you were pleased with the jobs numbers. 178,000 jobs added during the month of March. Do you think that reflects any impact of the Iran war and the fact that corporations maintained resiliency during some of the geopolitical risk?
Well, obviously it was a blockbuster number and the reason it's a blockbuster number is I think that economic agents throughout the US economy have their eyes on the horizon. They're looking at all of the positive things that are going on in terms of onshoring of production and increasing of income. So, we've got we're starting to get the early tax returns. We've seen 23 million people claim either no tax on tips or no tax on social security with an average benefit of $7,000. We've seen 22 million people get no tax on overtime with an average of about $3,000 benefit. And so all of those things are really really pushing the economy forward. And I think that that momentum will only take off should things quiet down in the middle.
Gas prices have increased. The president and the team view that as a temporary phenomenon. We're certainly very concerned. We've taken numerous steps to try to resolve or minimize the short-term disruption. We've released 170 million barrels from the strategic reserve. We've waived the Jones Act so that ships can move around the country. But the fact is that the federal government can do stuff, but the state governments can act as well, and they haven't been. And so in Arkansas, for example, the price of gas right now is a little north of $3. In California, it's almost double that. And so the states themselves have so many heavy regulations that are driving up gas prices that they too could have been acting but they haven't been.
Well, California could look at all the things that it does to raise gas prices and look itself in the mirror. Because right now Californians are hurting with their almost $6 gas.
Do you think it trickles through beyond just gas price inflation? I mean, we're expecting the CPI report for March on Friday, and the headline number is going to look big, but core expected at 0.3%. I mean, do you have concerns now that this has spread into places like fertilizer and shipping and diesel that it's more just beyond gas price inflation?
Well, you're right that it is clear that this has had an effect on fertilizer prices as well. But the bottom line is that a short-term disruption shouldn't have any kind of a lasting effect on the inflation rate. And in fact, if you look at the Cleveland Fed forecasts next month's inflation, they got it back down in the sort of normal range. And so I think that the theory of supply shocks like what we've seen with the closure of the strait is that you get a temporary increase in prices, but then things go back to normal and it doesn't affect the overall inflation rate or put pressure on the Fed.
On Thursday, Fitch said, Kevin, that it would probably take the Qataris years to replace some of the lost LNG capacity. Do you worry about that not being short-term?
You know, I think that there are some things that also like if wells have been turned off that it might take a while to get them going up again. There's some things to consider, but there's just an enormous amount of capacity that can go online really quickly if we get the straits open and I think that's why markets are reacting the way they are.
As for jobs, some people did look for hair on the print on Friday. Work week shrank. The revisions were not good. U6 was up a tenth and then wages Kevin have gone from 4.2 now to 3.5. Do you worry about that working against some of the dynamics that we're seeing in say gasoline?
Right. I mean it's important not to read too much into one month's survey. The fact is that if you look at that same jobs report, it now shows that 54,000 people have gained construction jobs over the last few months. So those construction jobs are happening because we expensed factories which are creating more jobs, increasing labor demand, and increasing wages. You know, when President Trump was here in the first term, we saw right before COVID that typical worker had a more than $6,000 pay raise because of all the factory construction. Factory construction this time is way ahead of that pace. And so we're very very bullish about wages.
15 more exchanges in this transcript
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Hassett, K. (2026, April 6). Watch CNBC's full interview with NEC director Kevin Hassett [Interview transcript]. CNBC Television. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/808044/
MLA
Kevin Hassett. "Watch CNBC's full interview with NEC director Kevin Hassett." CNBC Television, 6 Apr. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/808044/.
BibTeX
@misc{hassett2026_808044,
author = {Kevin Hassett},
title = {Watch CNBC's full interview with NEC director Kevin Hassett},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, CNBC Television. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {apr},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/808044/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
