Reference News Network, January 20 report: On January 7, the U.S. "Atlantic" monthly website published an article titled "Respected Economist Becomes Trump's Flatterer," authored by Roger C. Alford. Excerpts follow:

Other than the President of the United States, few people can have as much influence over the fate of the U.S. economy as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Current National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett may take on this crucial position.

In 2017, when Trump nominated Hassett to be the chairman of his first term's Council of Economic Advisers, the Washington economic establishment was very pleased. A bipartisan group of influential economists wrote a letter urging the Senate to confirm his appointment. To prove Hassett's qualifications, the letter mentioned that he had "a serious academic record on a wide range of issues," his distinguished resume included work at the Federal Reserve and the Treasury, and his efforts to "communicate with people of various ideologies."

However, upon closer examination of Hassett and conversations with a dozen colleagues, it becomes clear that the qualities he possessed in 2017 may no longer exist today. Over the past decade, Hassett has become a bold Trump cheerleader.

Previously criticized Trump

Before joining the "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) movement, Hassett had been a conservative economist for decades. He earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, then served as a professor of economics at Columbia Business School, and worked as a researcher at the Federal Reserve. In 1997, he became a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (later becoming director of economic policy research). For the next 20 years, Hassett wrote columns for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, and served as an advisor to George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney's presidential campaigns.

Like most conservative economists at the time, Hassett was a firm deficit hawk, advocated for increased immigration, and most importantly, was a free-trade advocate. During the Bush and Obama administrations, he called for significant reductions in the deficit, defended the global trading system, and suggested doubling the number of immigrants to boost economic growth. In 2011, when Trump considered running for president, Hassett wrote a review article criticizing his proposal to impose a 25% tariff on all Chinese imports.

Hassett once enjoyed a high reputation. Several signatories of the open letter in 2017 told me they believed Hassett was a mature and steady person who would prevent Trump from taking the most dangerous impulsive actions. In the first two years of Trump's presidency, this proved to be true. Although Hassett often publicly defended the president's decisions, it was well known that he privately advocated for more traditional approaches on issues such as immigration and trade. He even did not hesitate to suggest that Trump was not infallible. In an interview in 2019, when asked whether he supported Trump's request for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, Hassett replied, "My duty on the Council of Economic Advisers is not to advise the Federal Reserve, but to remind everyone to respect the independence of the Federal Reserve."

Change in ideological stance

In June 2019, Trump suddenly announced Hassett's departure. The first term's China trade war was escalating, and his clashes with Powell were intensifying. According to The New York Times, just a week before, Hassett was excluded from a White House meeting where the president decided to impose higher tariffs on Mexico.

In March 2020, Hassett was asked to return to the Council of Economic Advisers to help the White House deal with the pandemic. Trump was busy downplaying the severity of the virus and insisting that the U.S. must reopen quickly. If Hassett's independence had caused him to be ousted the previous year, he would not make the same mistake again. A few weeks after resuming his position, the Council of Economic Advisers released a model predicting that the number of coronavirus deaths had reached a peak and would drop to almost zero by mid-May. Experts immediately pointed out that Hassett used a misleading method called cubic polynomial fitting, which made the death data appear less alarming.

At the time, many economists who had known Hassett for a long time thought the cubic polynomial fitting incident was an accident. They did not realize that, according to Hassett's own account, he was undergoing a deep ideological transformation. In November 2021, Hassett published a book reflecting on his time in the Trump administration. In the book, Hassett described how he had transformed from a skeptical establishment figure into someone who believed that Trump was a MAGA warrior who would save the U.S. from disaster.

Frequently making false statements

When Trump returns to the White House in 2025, he brings back only a few of the most trusted advisors from his first term, and Hassett is one of them. Last January, he was appointed as the director of the National Economic Council and quickly became one of the most important agents of the government. Every time the president proposed some strange policy ideas, issued new threats, or recklessly lied about the economic situation, Hassett immediately defended them. The careful wording, commitment to factual truth, and reports about dissenting views that characterized Hassett's first two years of working for Trump no longer existed.

In April 2025, the president announced his "Liberation Day" tariffs: imposing extremely high import tariffs on almost all countries and some uninhabited islands. Hassett boasted on television that Trump's policies were brilliant, would improve the global trading system, increase revenue, and boost American industry. A week later, the president decided to implement a 90-day pause, and Hassett again appeared on television, claiming that this seemingly sudden move had always been the president's real intention. He told Fox News reporters, "That's what he has been implementing all along." Hassett also frequently makes obvious false statements: for example, when inflation rose for five consecutive months, he claimed that inflation had "fallen significantly."

Many people who know and respect Hassett have begun to worry that he has lost his credibility as an independent thinker and economist. For someone who is in a favorable position to compete for the position of U.S. central bank governor, this is a dangerous possibility. (Translated by Ge Xuele)

Original: toutiao.com/article/7597404744080032310/

Statement: This article represents the personal views of its author.