deputy assistant secretary at the treasury department, senior trade economist in the white house council of economic advisers news. there is so much to digests. we knew it was going to be busy. give us your top ports on the economy to begin with. l115 your top ports on the economy to begin with.— your top ports on the economy to begin with. us economy is in a aood to begin with. us economy is in a good spot- — to begin with. us economy is in a good spot. unemployment. to begin with. us economy is in a good spot. unemployment is| a good spot. unemployment is still relatively low. inflation is stubbornly not coming down as quickly and as easily as the fed had hoped. he has a couple of headwinds coming in. as the tailwind in terms of the economy but then that the headwind of the stubborn inflation. tt headwind of the stubborn inflation-— headwind of the stubborn inflation. , ., _, inflation. if you could give me our inflation. if you could give me your thoughts. _ inflation. if you could give me your thoughts. you _ inflation. if you could give me your thoughts. you have - your thoughts. you have operated withi

deputy assistant secretary at the treasury department, senior trade economist in the white house council of economic adviserstop thoughts on the economy. the us economy is in a good spot. unemployment is still, you know, relatively low. inflation, though, is stubbornly not coming down as quickly and as easily as the fed had hoped for. so he's got, you know, a couple headwinds coming in. he's got the tailwind in terms of, you know, good economy, but then he's got the headwinds of the stubborn inflation. give me your thoughts, christine, because, you know, you have operated within the white house, etc, in the treasury department. why did he not slap tariffs on certain countries straightaway, which is what we were all anticipating? well, i mean, straightaway, february 1st is, you know, fairly straightaway for a lot of people. remember, i mean, companies do need, you know, a bit of a heads up on in terms of, you know, just getting ready for the tariffs. you know, this president, president trump, is regarded as fairly market friendly, business friendly. and he pays attention to the markets. he pays attention to t

our guest is kevin hassett, chairman of the white house council of economic advisers. this is his first appearance at a monitor breakfast so welcome, chairman. first a little bit of background. like yours truly he is a native of the great commonwealth of massachusetts dopey from more rural part, greenfield. >> and it didn't get to vote for either of my home state senators. >> that's terrible. he's a graduate of swarthmore college and earned his phd in economics from university of pennsylvania. before his senate confirmation last september to his current post chairman has it was a resident scholar at the american enterprise institute here in washington. he was professor at columbia, worked at the federal reserve board of governors answer this economic advisers to three presidential candidates, george w. bush, john mccain and mitt romney. his current job, his first in the white house. now for the ground rules. we are on the record here so please no live blogging or tweeting. in short no filing of any kind on the breakfast is underway. there's no embargo in the session end

joining us now, former white house council of economic advisers chair jared bernstein.. you know, so given what you know about the economy, the perch you set in the economy that the trump administration has inherited, what are you most concerned about? >> well, thank you for having me on. i would say. >> i'm. >> most concerned about the kind of uncertainty that's generated by the. policy lurching that we've seen over the past. >> few days. >> along with. potential inflationary effects from sweeping tariffs and potentially deportations. >> i've long been concerned. >> about fed independence. >> but i think. >> that the economic. >> team over. >> there. bess and kevin hassett, those are folks that i know of. but especially kevin. these are good economists, and i. >> think they don't. want to. >> see interest rates or inflation go higher. so part. of this is a matter of. >> who wins those arguments internally. >> and how do you distill kind of the rollout of everything. because there are certain policies that could factor into the economy a little bit quicker. i'm thinking

>> first of all i'll remind the history when i started the white house right after president trump took office, and we put out as the chairman of the council of economic advisers that the head of something that sounds really cool and science fiction, called the troy comes like this romulan thing that's going to harm us but in charge of the government forecast. we went back and said to the president and to the cabinet members that we know the president has made a promise of 3% growth. we know everybody thinks it's a new norm and when we came out without their appointed people say you're just putting out a political document. what we did is we challenged everybody to get as policies that could take you from 1% growth to 3% of growth. we designed the tax cuts exactly the way we did to go after the business sector which is the highest tax place on earth, and we use really hard science to estimate what would happen to growth if we had those tax cuts and if we did that deregulation and if we did aggressively push energy exploration and help pipelines form and stuff like that. if you go back and look at the first economic report of the present book is laid out where