we have quite a guest off the top, kevin hassett, chairman of the council of economic advisors. we'll talk to i am about all that. we'll talk about the latest on trade, whether this booming economy will continue to boom. i am connell mcshane filling in for trish regan. welcome you to "the intelligence report." the president is asking the securities & exchange commission to replace quarterly reports to a six-month report, that it will improve flexibility and boost growth in his own words. >> head of pepsi-cola, a great woman who is now retiring, she said, i asked what could i do to make it better? she said two time a year reporting, not quarterly. i thought of it, it made sense to me. we are not thinking far enough out. we're being accused that a long time, this country, so we're looking at that very, very seriously. connell: shares of tesla getting hammered. ceo elon musk gave absolutely extraordinary interview to "the new york times." he admits this is the most difficult year of his career. the worst is yet to come. questions and investors questions are mounting over the fundin

-mexico trade deal as suggested by kevin hassett.nt a deal fast before their new president takes office? the answer, yes. market down 23 points as we speak. this is the third hour of "varney & company". ♪ adults are just kids with much, much better toys. introducing the 2018 c-class sedan, coupe and cabriolet. the thrills keep getting better. lease the c300 sedan for $399 a month at your local mercedes-benz dealer. mercedes-benz. the best or nothing. stuart: have a couple of headlines from the secretary of state coming right at us at the moment. number one, secretary pompeo says he will be traveling to north korea next week. yeah, he is going back. item two he spoke with his counterpart from russia,er is day lavrov, lavrov told him quote, washington's destructive approach to u.s.-russia ties is blocking cooperation. those two headlines came at us. if there is anything else you know it real fast. n.o.w. there is this. isis is claiming responsibility for a did lie knife attack out paris. the suspect killed two people before being shot

i want to look into this deal and what comes next with kevin hassett, the chairman of the white housec advisers. joining me from the white house, kevin, i remember you did some work with john mccain when he was running for president. >> yeah, that's right. >> you have a little insight into john mccain. and there are a lot of people who weren't sure what his economic strengths were, but actually you were part of the team that helped him develop an economic plan when he was running. >> you know, honestly, i really had a hard time being composed on sunday. it was so sad to see him go. john used to say that he doesn't know anything about economics and learned it all from me. all the real economists in the bush campaign, he got me out of the prison release program, things like that, he was a great joker. >> he was. that was a great part about him. a great accessibility to him. >> and then the times on the straight talk express back in 2000, mya mcginnis tweeted a picture of her, me and john, and i looked a lot younger then, but he really did capture lightning in a bottle for a while there.

ready for the retail reports including kohl's, lowe's, target and -- council of economic advisers, kevin hassettmost looks live there kevin! kevin! stay tuned you're watching "squawk box. at fidelity, our online u.s. equity trades are just $4.95. so no matter what you trade, or where you trade, you'll only pay $4.95. fidelity. open an account today. >>> time for the executive edge. we're talking china. stocks high overnight. eunice yun joins us from beijing. a lot riding on this what's the chinese perspective on that? >> absolutely. the chinese delegation is led by the vice commerce minister he's going to be arriving in washington on tuesday for talks on wednesday and thursday. the markets have taken heart that there could be some sort of resolution but still here on the ground, expectations are low that anything meaningful will really come out of these talks at this stage. my sources have been telling me that the two sides see these talks very, very differently the chinese see it as a first step to negotiations that could lead to a final deal when the two presidents meet on the sidelines of int

joining me now is kevin hassette, white house council of economic advisors chairman.sense of how these talks with canada are going right now? >> the friday deadline is a real thing because of the technicalities, like once the lawyers start talking about that, start thinking about the red sox. the friday deadline is a real thing. we have to send the mexico deal up to congress. we hope canada will be part of that. we're hearing there's a lot of progress being made and that it's possible that we'll be able to see something sometime soon. we're extremely hopeful that canada will join. it's a great deal. it's a historic deal that the president has designed with mexico and so they should sign up for it. we'll have to wait and see. there are a lot of differences between the two countries. we had zero tariffs on agricultural products. the president standing up for the farmers for mexico and canada that's more of a difficult political issue for the prime minister because they've got dairy farms that are trying to make milk on these farms that are covered with snow and so they

. >> reporter: that was house speaker paul ryan late last year.re and administration economist kevin hassett. >> i can tell you if we get thih bill throut will be great for american workers. >> reporter: and indeed the unemployment rate is at an 18- aar low. but jared bernstei economist in the obama administration, was convinced the tax cut money would be used not to create jobs but to benefit shareholders, through stock buybacks. >> in fact it's happened big time. we've seen a real escalation in share buybpoks. >> er: stock buybacks are expected to hit a record one trillion dollars this year, an almost 50% increase over 2017. so what is a stock buyback? harvard business school's charlie wang puts it simply. >> the company is repurchasing a certain number of shares outstanding from the shareholders, and by doing so they're distributing cash back to the universe of shareholders. >> reporter: in recent years, firms have been repurchasing their own stock, with a vengeance. apple approved a new $100 billion repurchase program in the spring. and from ebay to pepsi, in the years 2015 to 2017, comp

joining us now white house council economic affairs chair kevin hassett. guy, i understand that, but you have to talk to those guys. they're probably in the office next door. are we close to a trade deal of any kind? >> right, well, let's update everybody on the three things that are ongoing and in the news already. first, that there are mexican talks going on very close to the finish line. in fact, ambassador lighthizer who deserves some kind of a medal for all the hours he is putting in, was meeting yesterday with folks and some of us will be even meeting later today as well and i think we're very confident that most of our differences have been worked out there. with europe, you know, mr. juncker came here, and had a great meeting with the president and set a chart, charted a course forward for dealing with europe that will be exactly what president trump promised voters, fully fair and reciprocal trade deal. now china reached out with a sort of lower level official, trying to maybe decompress things a little bit and start over again with the talks and

now, joining me to talk about that part of the story is kevin hassett. not normally something kevin and i talk about. he's the chairman of the white house council of economic advisers. >> great job on the intro, it really summarized what's going on very well. >> what should we be thinking about this? how should we be thinking about turkey and it's economy? is there any danger of turkey's potential collapse being something to become contagious and hit the rest of the world? >> first of all, in the emerging market space, something we've seen over and over going back at least to the asian crisis back in the '90s, if one country starts to have problems, then people can generally decide that they want to move to another asset class and then the problem can become systemic. right now we're monitoring it very closely. treasury secretary mnuchin is monitoring it very closely. while i'm not involved in the discussions with turkey, i can say i'm looking at the numbers closely as well. the thing that i think that you need to process when you're thinking about the co

robin, we just had kevin hassett on. these new economic stats are pretty impressive.dp that's growing over 4%. it's a broad-based economic growth that's happening in the country. is this really the right time to come out with a socialist message? >> this is not how we anticipated this going, but we've got it now, whether or not we like it. i was not a supporter of bernie sanders. i kind of was happy a couple weeks ago when six out of seven of bernie's selected candidates lost, and now we've got to kind of face the music because it's basically bernie's pretty much invisibly on the ticket now, if you look at this race. so no, it's not really the best timing for us, especially, i'm glad the economy is doing well, but we are going to have a tough road ahead, especially because we are being outspent so much. david: it's true. spending is one issue. but brad, the reason why we are growing so much, a lot of people would argue, including myself, i have been pushing for tax cuts for awhile, is because we have tax cuts, whereas gillum has -- gillum is the guy in florida who is

we want to bring in kevin hassette. your initial reaction?t i saw over the weekend is suggesting that president trump picked another fight. >> right. i don't know if president trump is picking the fights or if the fights are finding us. the fact is, there are trade deals all around the world that aren't reciprocal and aren't fair to the u.s. workers and president trump is standing up to try to fix them. a specific episode with turkey is something different. so we've increased the tariffs on through our section 232 for steel which is basically an attempt to stop steel dumping by the turks into the u.s. which president trump judged harms our national security. interestingly, section 232 affected lots of countries. turkey has seen their lira go into a collapse. i think that reflects a lot more troubling fundamentals in that country. so as we looked around the world, where countries have lost the rule of law, moved away from democracy, then capital tends to want to get out of that country and that can lead to a currency crisis like we're seeing.

we have quite a guest off the top, kevin hassett, chairman of the council of economic advisors.m about all that. we'll talk about the latest on trade, whether this booming economy will continue to boom. i am connell mcshane filling in for trish regan. welcome you to "the intelligence report." the president is asking the securities & exchange commission to replace quarterly reports to a six-month