President Donald Trump’s economic adviser Gary Cohn resigned last week, but he and the President only had positive comments to say about each other as he departed. “It has been an honor to serve my country and enact pro-growth economic policies to benefit the American people, in particular the passage of historic tax reform,” Cohn said in a prepared statement.
In his own statement, Trump said, “Gary has been my chief economic advisor and did a superb job in driving our agenda, helping to deliver historic tax cuts and reforms and unleashing the American economy once again.”
It’s widely speculated that Cohn left due to dissatisfaction with Trump’s proposed steel tariffs, but Cohn denies there was any single reason he resigned. While Trump hasn’t officially made an announcement as to whom Cohn’s replacement will be, it’s being reported that CNBC’s Larry Kudlow, a former Reagan insider, is at the top of the list. According to The Hill,
[Jim] Cramer, who has worked with Kudlow at the network on the show “Kudlow and Cramer,” reported that Kudlow has not been formally offered the job, but is the leading choice among the president and some of his advisers.
Kudlow, who served as an informal adviser to the Trump campaign, predicted during an interview aired Sunday that all of Europe would likely be exempted from the tariffs Trump signed last week.
When asked last week about the possibility of joining the Trump administration, Kudlow told CNBC he didn’t “want to talk through all those scenarios.”
He’ll be talking about it soon now. More from the report:
Stephen Moore, a Heritage Foundation economist who worked with Kudlow on Trump’s campaign tax plan, told The Hill that Kudlow is “definitely one of the top three” candidates to become the next director of the National Economic Council, but Trump has yet to make a decision.
Moore praised Kudlow, saying that he played a “huge role in getting the tax bill through.”
“Larry’s a great communicator,” Moore said. “He’s one of the best economic voices out there for free-enterprise economics.”
Prominent supply-side economist Arthur Laffer also said he hoped Kudlow gets the position.
“I think he’d be the perfect person for the job,” he said.
Kudlow played a role in getting Trump’s tax plan through (by promoting it in the financial media), and he’ll likely be an influential voice in housing finance reform, which Steve Mnuchin would be next on the Administration’s list after tax reform.
Kudlow’s prior comments on mortgage insurers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are currently in a government conservatorship in which 100% of theirs profits are sent to the Treasury, indicate he’d favor privatizing the two entities instead of having the government continue to take their income.
Read whole Fan/Fred story @gmorgenson @nytimesbusiness. Obama Treasury, Justice, FHFA all lied to shareholders thru profit sweep. Incredible
— Larry Kudlow (@larry_kudlow) May 21, 2016
Since the government owns 79% of the two entities, taxpayers are also on the hook for any losses the two firms inevitably will have in the future. Last September, the RNC released a plan in which they proposed selling the government’s 79% stake in the two companies, which they estimate would generate “$100 billion in additional cash profits.”
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