Hi, Kevin. Hey, Kevin. Can you come take a few questions from us please? How are you doing? How are you? Good to see you. Can we talk about Chair Powell today? He attributed some of the negative sentiment in the markets and the economy to Trump Administration policy actions. What's your reaction to that?
Oh, I respect the independence of the fed as we all do with the White House. And so, we don't remark about current policy decisions that they've made and I try not to cherry pick things that Chairman Powell said.
What about the underlying --
I think that -- I'm happy to talk about the economics of things. And I think that Chairman Powell is clear that if there were a tariff effect that it's a transitory one. And that's in every economic model. I just think that the tariff effect is probably zero or negative. And I just thought the Kudlow Show highlighted that there was a massive increase in industrial production in the data that we got yesterday and it was an increase in auto production, which was a bigger increase than the entire decline from the Biden Administration last year.
And so, one of the things that President Trump's tariff policy is seeking to accomplish is to get people to buy US cars instead of foreign cars, so that we create jobs here. And if you do that, then if you go to the car lot and you look at like what's it cost to buy a car from this dealer or that dealer, then it's not necessarily inflationary to switch to the American car.
And that's what our intuition is about how to think about that. But -- but he was correct, that the economics literature is clear that it's a level adjust, if anything at all.
Kevin, these oil execs were here today at some point, um, they obviously -- that industry has warned a lot about the risk of tariffs on oil and gas. How dangerous is it or impactful is that to consumers and everything that gets shipped?
What gets tariffed or not is something that you'll have complete clarity on at April 2. And so, I don't want to talk about specific industries with tariffs.
But generally, how -- how harmful to the economy are tariffs or impactful on the economy --
I think we think that we're onshoring activity with our trade policy and it's really clearly in the data already.
Two questions, one on the GDP growth prediction that they had just now; 1.7 percent compared to 2.1 percent in December. What's your reaction to that?
Oh, I have an old fashioned back of the envelope model that I was taught by Alan Greenspan on how to use back when I was a 29-year-old economist at the fed. And I just ran the numbers a couple of days ago and the old Greenspan model was north of two. And so, I think --
North of two?
Yeah, I said two and a half a week ago and I actually got that out of a model that was one of Alan Greenspan's favorite real-time models. So, if you like, we could explain how to do that, but you don't want to do that right now. [Laughter]
You also just said that you respect the independence of the fed so you don't want to comment on that.
Sure.
The President fired last night, two members of the FTC, the Democratic members of that. Um, it raised questions about whether or not he does respect the independence of the fed or he thinks that they are fair game as well. Uh, what is the president's view on that?
Oh, we very much respect the independence of the fed and there's a massive literature that independent central banks perform better for economies. And so, I don't think that's in dispute.
So, he doesn't think he can fire the fed chair?
Uh, I think that that's been resolved in the previous administration. You can go back and find a clip where I talked about it right in the space.
There's a reverse migration phenomenon going on in the country. A lot of people are moving out of the US. Migrants fear that they can be deported, uh, do you think that might have an effect on the economy in the near run?
Uh, one of the things we saw in the Jobs Report was that there was a massive increase in employment for US residents. It was 278,000, if I remember the number correctly. And so, I think the president's objective is to create more jobs for American workers and that was clearly in the Jobs Report. If an undocumented person is leaving the country, then the question is what was their employment status?
And for many of them, they weren't employed.
[Crosstalk]
When it comes to trading blocs, like the European Union, is the President considering tariffs country by country or --
Yeah, I'm not going to talk about ahead of the April 2 thing. And I'll take one more question. Over here.
Yeah, when it comes to sanctions on Russia, has anything changed when it comes to this conversation that we saw President Trump have with Putin? What has Trump told you about if those sanctions are off the table, how that would affect the economy?
That's an ongoing negotiation. S, I'm sorry, so that won't count as the last question because I just -- Yes?
Would you be willing to give us an update on that AG program that you mentioned on the egg prices, how's that going?
Yeah, they're down $ 2.50 a dozen. And I went to the grocery store, as I do every Saturday because I'm the one who likes to shop for my family because I get to see all the prices, and the egg prices in DC were actually down quite a bit more than $2.50 a dozen.
How do you know that's directly correlated with what the Trump Administration is doing.
Um, because if you look at the data on the culling of chickens, it's basically stopped, uh, starting on January 20. Uh, there's a chart we can show you on that, but it's astonishing how many chickens were killed in the last two months of the Biden Administration. And by having a more prudent Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins has done a more prudent policy about how to manage the disease, then we got lower egg prices and healthier chickens because they're not being culled in millions.
[Crosstalk]
Again, remember it was more than 100-something million chickens were culled and they spent $2 million killing the chickens. And if you look at what's happened to the culling since President Trump took office, it's gotten almost to zero. Well, thank you guys very much. I'm sorry.
[Crosstalk]
What are the wholesale price of eggs versus what consumers are actually paying? We've seen wholesale prices go down, but it's not always reflected in the grocery store.
The latest egg prices -- go to the grocery store. I literally just went to the grocery store and bought the same eggs I always buy and they were way down.
[Crosstalk]
But that's not -- the whole country, of course.
No, but it's $2.50 a dozen for the whole country. So -- OK, thank you, guys.
Thanks.
[Crosstalk]
Appreciate you.