Speaking to reporters, White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett defended President Trump's tariffs.
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00:00A question on Maloney meeting?
00:02Sir, I think one of the things that irritated the president here is Powell's remarks on inflation.
00:08We heard a similar message yesterday from the head of the IMF who said that next week,
00:14when they release their forecasts, they're going to be notable markdowns in terms of growth,
00:19but also notable markups in terms of inflation.
00:22Can you walk us through, from your point of view, what the tariff impact will be on inflation
00:27and how long or short-lived it will be?
00:29What I'd like to do is just think of the policy rather than the personalities.
00:38And the policy of this Federal Reserve was to raise rates the minute President Trump was elected last time,
00:44to say that the supply-side tax cuts were going to the inflationary,
00:49even though supply-side tax cuts could get growth without inflation,
00:52to not go out there on TV and at IMF meetings and warn about the terrible inflation
00:58from the obvious right away spending from Joe Biden.
01:03And the obvious right away spending from Joe Biden was textbook inflationary,
01:06and we didn't see anybody warning about that.
01:08And then they cut rates right ahead of the election.
01:11And so if you think that it's unacceptable because it's frustrating with the policy history of the Fed,
01:17that I think that you've got to fulfill explaining to you.
01:21And so I think that, you know, we'll see what the record is.
01:24But right now what we're seeing is that the tariffs are on-shoring activity at a remarkable rate,
01:29that capital spending is moving towards an all-time high,
01:32that the jobs numbers were way better than we expected,
01:36maybe about 70,000 or 80,000 jobs higher than we expected of us.
01:39And so President Trump's policies are working.
01:41And meanwhile, inflation numbers have been going down.
01:44And so against that backdrop, to have everybody who refused to warn about the runaway spending,
01:50you know, out there saying, oh, this is going to be a catastrophe for inflation because of tariffs,
01:54is that people need to, like, improve their models and improve their messages.
01:58And with that, I'd like to keep going.
02:00A question on the line.