President Trump, in naming Larry Kudlow to be the next director of the National Economic Council is picking someone who can command a television audience, someone who has been loyal to Mr. Trump over a period of many years and someone who believes in supply-side economics – all attributes that the President highly values.
The President offered the role to Kudlow in a late-night phone conversation this week and Kudlow accepted. He will be replacing former National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, who resigned last week in a bitter disagreement with the President over steel and aluminum tariffs the President favored but Cohn saw as counterproductive.
Reports are that Cohn lost an internal power struggle with Peter Navarro, the U.S.’ trade representative and that the President’s decision was seen as a big win for Navarro and a bruising defeat for Cohn.
Kudlow has been largely critical of the tariffs himself calling them a tax that will wind up hurting only consumers. In an op-ed he, along with co-authors wrote, “In other words, steel and aluminum may win in the short term, but steel and aluminum users and consumers will lose. In fact, tariff hikes are really tax hikes.”
“Trump should also examine the historical record on tariffs, because they have almost never worked as intended and almost always deliver an unhappy ending,” they added.
The President, in talking about Kudlow as his selection, said they discussed the tariff issue and Kudlow has come to see value in it. The President also respects the difference of opinion Kudlow would bring, he said.
“I want to have a divergent opinion,” the President said. “We agree on most. He now has come around to believing in tariffs as also a negotiating point. I’m renegotiating trade deals and without tariffs we wouldn’t do nearly as well. But Larry has been a friend of mine for a long time. He backed me very early in the campaign; I think the earliest; I think he was one of my original backers. He’s a very, very talented man, a good man.”
Kudlow has worked in previous presidential administrations, most notably Ronald Reagan’s, serving in his Office of Management and Budget. He had worked on Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign alongside famed supply-side economist Arthur Laffer, to whom Kudlow became a protégé.
In recent years Kudlow has worked as a financial commentator on the channel CNBC and as an economic consultant. He reportedly has a close relationship with U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, with whom he worked on Trump’s economic plan during his presidential campaign.
The President had forecast that changes were coming to his cabinet and that he was close to perfecting it. Sources say the President, a year into his administration, is feeling more confident and is more readily inclined to dismiss advisers who don’t share his philosophy on key issues.
“I have gotten to know a lot of people very well over the last year and I’m really at a point where we’re getting close to having the cabinet and other things that I want,” he said this week.