Years (or months) from now, if the economy goes into recession, remember this is the team that brought you that outcome.
Notes: Clockwise from top left: Bessent (to Treasury; Yale; Key Square Group), Luttnick (to Commerce: Haverford; Cantor Fitzgerald), Hassett (to NEC; Swarthmore, Penn; AEI), Vought (to OMB; Wheaton, GWU Law; Heritage/CRA/Project 2025), Greer (to USTR; BYU, UVA Law; USTR and King & Spalding); Miran* (to CEA; BU, Harvard; Hudson Bay Capital Mgmt), Navarro (to EOP; Tufts, Harvard; UC Irvine and EOP), Faulkender* (to Treasury Dpty; UC Davis, Northwestern; Treasury, UMD). * indicates not yet confirmed by Senate (if necessary).
Of particular interest to me is CEA Chair-designate Stephen Miran’s views on tariffs (Bloomberg):
“The American economic story has seen periods of high tariff rates coincide with extraordinary economic success,” said Stephen Miran, Trump’s pick as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. “There’s nothing in the historical record that would say that it’s impossible to have a fabulous economy with high tariffs.”
How can CEA fulfill its traditional role (of killing really bad economic policy proposals) if the top guy doesn’t know what a bad policy is…?
