About Gary Cohn
Gary Cohn, vice chairman of IBM and former director of the National Economic Council, has made several media appearances discussing the economy, Federal Reserve policy, and artificial intelligence. Commenting on the potential impact of an Iran deal on oil prices, Cohn said prices are "not going to fall like a rock overnight" and that it depends on how quickly the Strait of Hormuz reopens, though he added that a "change in psychology" could eventually lead to lower prices. He noted that rising oil prices "will have an impact on the consumption power of America" and described the economy as K-shaped, with asset owners seeing their holdings appreciate while a "large predominance of our country" faces rising input costs that outpace wage growth.
Regarding the Federal Reserve, Cohn said incoming Chair Kevin Warsh understands inflation is at three-year highs and faces political pressure to lower interest rates, but predicted Warsh will "remove himself from the political pressure" and base policy on economic data. Cohn expressed confidence in Warsh's experience from the 2008 financial crisis. On artificial intelligence, Cohn stated he is "in the camp that this time is the same," comparing AI to past technological advancements that were expected to eliminate jobs but instead led to GDP growth
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Gary Cohn's recent appearances.
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✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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David0:00
So when the president turns to you, Gary, and says, 'How can we possibly keep this sort of addition to jobs going at this point in the cycle?' What do you tell him?
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Gary Cohn0:10
Well, David, I think there's a fairly easy answer here. Remember, in our first 50 days — today, by the way, is our 50-day halftime; seven weeks ago today was inauguration — in the first 50 days here, we've had an enormous amount of CEO traffic into the White House. We've had many big announcements from CEOs, whether it be the automobile manufacturers or Intel. You've seen many of the announcements about people building manufacturing back in the United States, bringing manufacturing back to the United States. Remember, those jobs are not in these numbers; those jobs will come in the future, they'll come 3, 6, 12 months from now. So we think there's enormous demand for American workers built into the system, just in what we're seeing from the CEOs that are coming into the White House. That is going to naturally grow demand for workers. Those workers will grow demand for other workers. There'll be an enormous trickle-down and trickle-up in that. So we're very excited about the job prospects in America.
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David1:08
So as you say, you've had the benefit now of talking with all these CEOs. You've got at least a good part of your team together — you've got Steve Mnuchin over at Treasury, you've got various people in place. So based on that and putting together a budget which you're doing right now, what sort of growth projections are you building in?
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Gary Cohn1:23
Well, look, we're very optimistic on growth, but the one thing we're going to do in the White House is we're going to set very realistic growth projections. We've actually looked back at all the prior administrations in their beginning and saw what they put out for GDP forecast at the beginning of their administrations, and none of them got close to meeting their GDP projections. We're actually going to put out GDP projections that we think we can not only meet, we think we're going to beat. We would rather under-promise and over-deliver here than over-promise, because we think it's relatively easy to do in the part of the cycle we're in, seeing the activity that we've seen from all the CEOs that we've engaged with, and the fact that we're going to be rolling back regulation, we're going to be bringing out new tax policies in the United States. We're very optimistic about the GDP growth that we think is coming.
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David2:10
Yeah, it's certainly what I learned at the Walt Disney Company: you want to under-promise and over-deliver when it comes to budgets. But to get a little more specific, if you look at the projections that are out there right now for GDP growth for this year, it's something in the low twos range, up to 2.3, 2.4. Will you expect something materially better than that?
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Gary Cohn2:26
Well, remember, we're already in the middle of the year, so moving the 2.3 or 2.4 projection much higher is going to be tough to move that dramatically higher this year. But yes, we would like to outperform the 2.3 or 2.4 prediction for this year. But as we grow over the next year or two, we think that we can substantially improve on that number as we get tax reform done in the second half of this year, as we continue to get the jobs created from the companies that committed job growth to us in the future. We think growing the GDP forward is going to be relatively in line with our projections. Our projections, as I said, they're cautiously optimistic, and we think we can outperform them. So yes, we will continue to see growth, but remember, this year is somewhat starting to be baked in, but we will outperform where some of the projections are.
