Do you have a second to chat?
[Inaudible] Happy Friday, everybody.
Same to you.
[Inaudible] hope you had a good Easter.
Mr. Hassett?
Yeah?
You wrote in your 2021 book that firing Jerome Powell during the president's first term, quote, would have savaged the reputation of the Federal Reserve Board as an objective and independent manager of the nation's money supply, the credibility of the dollar would have been compromised, the stock market might have crashed.
Do you stand by that assessment?
I think that at that time, the market was in a completely different place and I was referring to the legal analysis that we had back then. And if there's new legal analysis that says something different, then it would be a different market response as well.
Do you think it would be a problem to fire right now? The Trump team -- or the US team and China, President Trump says, are communicating, in talks on a potential deal. Can you discuss any more of what that looks like?
I can't discuss it [Inaudible] right now.
Or just anything that might progress from that?
Yeah, I'm sorry, I don't have anything to add. [Inaudible]
I know you mentioned that there was something about 15 or potentially 20 deals on the table the last time we checked in. Do you have an update on that number?
It's more than 50 now, that I asked Jamieson Greer yesterday [Inaudible] readout. And the deal on the table is specifically like people have listed here [Inaudible] do and they're really big, big steps forward for the American worker.
And going off of my colleague's question, do you think firing J. Powell is an option now in a way that it wasn't before?
The president and his team will continue to study that matter.
But what exactly do you think would happen to the market? Have President Xi and Trump actually spoken?
Excuse me?
Have President Trump and President Xi Jinping spoken?
I don't have anything to add on China right now.
Has China reached out?
I guess [Inaudible] China. We could keep going, but no, I don't have anything on China.
You mentioned there's more than 15 deals on the table. Is there -- Sir?
Yeah, back there.
Sir? Jordan Conrad, Gateway Pundit. I have two questions. So firstly, President Trump has brought in over $21 billion in revenue, but he's facing criticism from the media for that number not being higher. Do you expect that number to increase and how does that number $21 billion compare to previous administrations?
Well, what's going to happen is that revenue is going to go up a lot and revenue is going to go up a lot from the tariff revenue, from the people who continue to send stuff into the US. But when we create jobs in the US, that's also going to increase tax revenue by a lot. If you think about imports in the US, it's about 16 percent of GDP and 14 to 16 percent and let's say 85 percent is domestic production.
And so as stuff moves on shore domestically, that you could create a lot more revenue than you get from the tariff. And so at the end, we're really bullish on revenue and really bullish on tariff revenue and as stuff onshores, which is happening way faster than I expected, that there's going to be a lot more tax revenue as well.
On taxes. And secondly, sir. On taxes. As far as Congress is concerned, there is complaints right now that certain staffers are pushing the president to make sure that the top rate [Inaudible] collapses and goes up to 40 percent again. Can you talk about that, because there are small businesses, non-trade organization that say that simply is not going to work?
The thing I got to say is that the tax policy of the president is going to be the decision of the president and the president has advisers that say, well, here are all of the options that you can consider. You know, President Trump is almost always in the fairway, right, watching his golf game. But on tax policy, he's in the weeds and he's going to make the decision about what he does and nobody else.
Yeah, we're talking about 90 trade organizations that are saying that [Inaudible] --
Look, the president has not made an announcement about this policy and when he does, that's what it should be and people should start sending letters about it.
When do you anticipate that he will make the decision on that [Inaudible] --
Well, the hope is that the tax bill will be passed by the summer, or early summer. And so things are moving very, very quickly. We've had meetings with the so-called Big Six over and over again since this began and we expect probably to finalize the president's thoughts on [Inaudible] to get there, at least first thoughts, opening salvos by sometime next week.
OK. [Inaudible] -- A question on Maloney meeting. So he's -- I think one of the things that irritated the president [Inaudible] remarks on inflation. We heard a similar message yesterday from the head of the IMF, who said that there -- next week when they release their forecasts, they're going to be notable markdowns in terms of growth, but also notable markups in terms of inflation.
Can you walk us through, from your point of view, what the impact will be on inflation and how long or short lived it will be?
What I'd like to do -- please, don't interrupt. She had a question, but we'll come over. What I'd like to do is just think of the policy rather than the personalities. And the policy of this Federal Reserve was to raise rates the minute President Trump was elected last time, to say that the supply side tax cuts were going to be inflationary, even though supply side tax cuts can get growth without inflation, to not go out there on TV and at IMF meetings and warn about the terrible inflation from the obvious runaway spending from Joe Biden.
And the obvious runaway spending from Joe Biden was textbook inflationary, and we didn't see anybody warning about that. And then they cut rates right ahead of the election. And so if you think that it's unacceptable for President Trump to be frustrated with the policy history of the fed, then I think that you got some explaining to do. And so I think that we'll see what the record is. But right now, what we're seeing is that the tariffs are onshoring activity at a remarkable rate, that capital spending is moving towards an all-time high, that the jobs numbers were way better than we expected, maybe about 70,000 or 80,000 jobs higher than we expected last month.
And so President Trump's policies are working and meanwhile, inflation numbers have been going down. And so against that backdrop, to have everybody who refused to warn about the runaway spending out there saying, oh, this is going to be a catastrophe for inflation because of tariffs, means that people need to improve their models and improve their messaging.
With that, I'd like to keep going.
A question on Maloney meeting. Any chance of lifting sanctions against Russia --