Director, National Economic Council of the United States
Trump wants to keep growing the U.S. economy: Kevin Hassett
White House Council of Economic Advisers Chair Kevin Hassett discusses the strength of the U.S. economy and the U.S-China trade negotiations.
FOX Business Network (FBN) is a financial news channel delivering real-time information across all platforms that impact both Main Street and Wall Street. Headquartered in New York — the business capital of the world — FBN launched in October 2007 and is the leading business network on television, topping CNBC in Business Day viewers for the second consecutive year. The network is available in more than 80 million homes in all markets across the United...
About Kevin Hassett
Kevin Hassett, Director of the National Economic Council, has been a frequent public spokesperson for the Trump administration’s economic policies. In press briefings and media appearances, he has characterized the U.S. economy as experiencing a "supply-side boom" driven by administration policies such as deregulation, tax cuts, and tariffs. He cited the May 2026 jobs report of 172,000 added jobs as evidence of this, stating that the number beat the highest forecast in a Bloomberg surveyched. Hassett has argued that the Federal Reserve should not raise interest rates in response to the jobs data, describing the growth as a "supply-side jobs number" that allows for growth without runaway inflationichel. Hassett has also addressed high gas prices and inflation, which he described as a "temporary energy shock" caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. He stated that the administration expects prices to fall once the strait reopens, predicting that oil will flow "like you've never seen before" due to excess capacity from countries like the UAE. When questioned about low consumer sentiment, Hassett argued that the widely cited University of Michigan survey is "extremely partisan" and suggested it should be renamed "political sentiment," pointing to a separate Conference Board survey that he said showed higher confidence. He has also promoted the use of artificial intelligence by small businesses, claiming that firms using AI saw their sales double.
Transcript (18 segments)
✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
L
Lou0:05
Edward Lawrence from Washington. Thank you.
Genocide the President's point man on the economy, Kevin Hassett, the chair of advisors which just released their annual report. Thank you for being with us. We're looking at $9 trillion added to the stock market since the President was elected. $9 trillion. And we are watching Democrats in Congress passing resolutions debating nonsense and trying to harass the President any way they can. This is an extraordinary economy. He is already a historic President based on his economic achievements alone.
K
Kevin Hassett1:01
All-time highs, unemployment all-time lows. Every state in the country has hit an all-time low for unemployment. Wages are growing fast, especially for people at the bottom. 6.5% at the bottom 10 percent wage distribution. Everywhere you look, the policies are actually delivering for the American people. So I think that there is a lot more work to do. When I look at the numbers, I agree with the President when he says this is one of the best economies they'd ever seen. The only thing that comes close in my mind is during the dot-com boom in the 90s we had a number of years where things started to look this good.
L
Lou1:38
You can mention the word, President Clinton was in office. Chris, of course, I am not making a political point, I'm making a data point.
K
Kevin Hassett1:44
I am making a political point.
L
Lou1:45
[Laughter] Crack Scottrade. I was going to say the President is great. The thing I like best about working with him is he is totally not satisfied. We were meeting with him today and yesterday and he was just basically, what do we do to go up from here? I mean this is great but let's go from here, what else can we do? He absolutely is pursuing with an enormous amount of energy to make this the best economy ever.
He is a nation to lead and to move toward his vision of our future. And indeed, the nation's vision. Which is becoming brighter it seems with every passing day. I have to make another political point because as we sit here, people don't realize, it hasn't been two and a half years since the President took office. Let's hear what a Nobel Prize-winning economist, you have got one of those but Paul does. This will show you just how screwed up the Nobel folks are. As he said after the President's election, now comes the mother of all adverse effects and what it brings with it is a regime that will be ignorant of economic policy. And hostile to any effort to make it work. We are very probably looking at a global recession with no end in sight. Have you ever gotten an apology by the way from the Nobel?
K
Kevin Hassett3:11
No! And as I mentioned quite a bit in this column not very favorably, I want to express an opinion about him as a person. I can't say his early work that he got the Nobel Prize for was in top journals and it was worthy of our praise, but now he's become independent and kind of an angry one that says things that are not necessarily based on the size that he used to push so aggressively.
L
Lou3:34
You are one of the nicest guys, Kevin. He is a jerk! He is an absolute jerk!
K
Kevin Hassett3:43
Sir, the point is that there was no analysis to support the idea that we were about to have a permanent recession after the President was elected. The analysis we put out said the opposite. And I do not know that a bunch of people disagreed with us, but for now the proof is in the pudding. Numbers are really strong and there is GDP coming out this week. Consensus is it will be about three percent again. Everyone told you that you were falling off a cliff at the beginning of the year and that number by the way, don't forget, at 3/10 because it will be artificially low because of the government shutdown. So if it comes in at 2.8 the number is 3.1. It will continue to grow three percent and that is a number guys like the professor says is impossible.
L
Lou4:23
Well, guys like Krugman are not in short supply on the left of the spectrum politically. By the way, there's another few tenths of a percent to be having economic growth. As soon as the President balances trade, that will add well over time, dollars to our economy. Will it not?
K
Kevin Hassett5:03
Yeah, and indeed, the thing you were covering in the conversation before I came on, all of the latest happenings in trade. I have to say I was sort of briefed on those today and you nailed it. He spoke to the right person. That's exactly what's going on. We have lots of progress moving forward. There is talk about setting up the next round of meetings with the Chinese. We are meeting with the Japanese this week and you are right that there are some hiccups with the Europeans, but the fact is that the International Trade Commission came out with a report that really could have trashed the President's new deal with Canada and Mexico, but it said that the positive impact of the deal is bigger than the estimate of the positive impact of every previous trade deal going back to 1984. So President Trump just made the best trade deal ever, you know, by the ITC's own analysis. When the President asked me to take the job or read The Art of the Deal and actually saw how he makes great deals, and I'm seeing it now in his interactions with other countries that he really is delivering historic great deals.
L
Lou5:54
Historic great deals and, as we have discussed before here, his insistence on balancing global trade.
K
Kevin Hassett6:05
Making it more fair.
L
Lou6:06
A new era of prosperity. Not only for America most importantly of course, but for indeed, the rest of the world. And mercantilism will die very quickly in China and in Europe. Angela Merkel may not believe it but it will. Right?
K
Kevin Hassett6:24
That's right. Because President Trump was not bluffing. If people did not make the deals reciprocal then he was going to put tariffs on them as we have with the Chinese.
L
Lou6:33
Kevin Hassett, it is always good to talk to because the news is so, so good. I appreciate it and you are such a nice guy!
K
Kevin Hassett6:41
Cut it out. Spoon Paul Krugman should I...