Press Briefing: Kevin Hassett Speaks to Reporters Outside the White House - August 7, 2026

Hey guys, I, uh, un- -- until I, uh, start, uh, getting overheated, I said I'd take a few questions, so, uh, we'll, we'll see how long I can handle the sun. [Laughs] So, yeah, you g- --

Yeah.

-- you go first.

Thanks a lot, Kevin.

Yeah. Okay.

What do you make of the new numbers as it relates to the labor department's employment numbers, uh, some negative growth as it relates to employment?

Mm-hmm. Right. Well, uh, first of all, the momentum in the economy is, continues to be strong. We see, uh, you know, durable goods orders, capital spending through the roof, uh, people aren't being laid off. Initial claims for unemployment insurance are about the lowest they've had since World War II. And so, when you see a number like that, it seems like, it's dissonant with everything else that we're seeing.

When we dug into the numbers, we saw that there were really two special factors.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, one is there was a big decline in, uh, government employment, uh, which is partly because of DOGE, and partly because, there was so much snow over the winter that there were extra school days at the end of the year. And so, the normal time when tea- -- uh, teachers would take the summer off was June, but a lot of them got pushed into July.

Mm-hmm.

And so, then they show up as a layoff in July. And, uh, the end of the World Cup meant that a lot of hospitality work, hospitality workers, uh, were then laid off after the World Cup ended. If you take those two effects out, it was about 100,000, uh, job number, which is about consistent with what we expected at the market.

We expected 88,000.

So you see it as an aberration more than anything, this number, correct?

Yeah. And, and of course at the end, the, you know, the proof will be in the, i- -- in the number that we get ne- -- next month. And, and, and so, if you were to get a sequence of numbers like this, then, you know, there's not gonna be special factors every month. But our expectation is that everything else, which is saying that we're booming, uh, is more consistent with the decline in the unemployment rate that we saw than in the, uh, payroll number.

Is the ongoing war in Iran having an, uh, impact, a negative impact on the U.S. economy?

Uh, o- -- oil energy prices are a little bit inflated, but we could say that, way less than people expected. Uh, but we're mindful of the fact that gasoline prices are high and we're making many steps, uh, to help reduce the stress of that for people. Uh, can you come over here?

Kevin, uh, on the, uh, Russia sanction bill, uh, and your trade negotiations with India, uh, where does it stand right now and does that impact, uh, this trade deal that is supposed to happen sometime soon?

Uh, that's up to the negotiators and I, and I can't give you insight into ongoing negotiations.

[Crosstalk]

And what is status of the trade deal?

Yeah.

So much of the economy is, uh, b- and confidence in the economy, is built on AI and the build out of the data centers.

Mm-hmm.

Are you concerned that the CapEx on data centers and AI, is gonna slow down and you'll have to find something else?

You know, there, there's, uh, a boom in manufacturing and construction across every manufacturing industry just about. And so, factories are being built, uh, at a pace that we've never seen before. And that's not an accident, it's because of something that President Trump, uh, really, his idea that got forced into the big, beautiful bill, which is that, usually when you buy a building, you get to depreciate it over 37 and a half years.

Uh, but in the big, beautiful bill for four years, if you build a new factory, you get to expense it right away. And so, we're seeing a, a massive build of new factories, and as the machine, and people are buying machines, as those machines get put inside the buildings, plugged in, it's gonna be massive for job creation.

Which is why we remain very bullish, even when there's a number like today that we think is, uh, temporarily, uh, slower than we expected.

[Crosstalk]

Mr. Hassett, why were there revi- -- why were there the downward revisions?

These are, these are very, these are very noisy data. Uh, it, it's very, very noisy. You, you saw, uh, that over the last few years there have been revisions in the multi, multimillions. And, and so, it's a survey that is like one thing to look at, uh, but there are a lot of other things to look at too, like the ADP number, uh, which was 44,000. And then, you know, there are private companies that put out jobs numbers too.

The reason why they have a market for their services is these are very noisy numbers. So it doesn't mean they don't have expert professionals at BLS, uh, but it does mean that you gotta look at lots of things to wonder about the state of [Inaudible]

Mr. -- Mr. Hassett, regarding Columbia, today is the new, is inaugurated the new President of Columbia, Abelardo de la Esprilla, he's close to President Trump. Columbia has a tariff of 12.5%, and they're hoping to reduce that tariff for a specific products. Do you think that it's possible that Columbia, uh, looking forward to those negotiations can reduce those tariffs?

That, that will be up to President Trump, so I, I can't jump in front of him.

Can you try?

Does the White House trust the numbers given that the reason why Nebraska [Inaudible]

We, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't, yeah. There's, I don't think that there's any, uh, hijinks or funny business with the numbers. I think that it's just, uh, a survey that's very, very noisy. They have a lot of things they have to impute, and that makes the number get revised a lot.

Kevin, back in June, uh, around the Memorandum of Understanding that was sent to the U.S. and Iran, the president argued that if the Iran war were to continue, there would be an economic capacity, that he didn't wanna be another permanent mover.

Mm-hmm. [Laughs]

Uh, obviously the war has continued beyond that. Uh, what is your take on how much the economy can handle with this? Particularly with gas prices, the midterms remaining, what are you guys doing [Inaudible]

Well, the, the president took these steps, don't forget, because, if Iran had a nuclear weapon, then there's no saying how bad, uh, the global economy, uh, would be. And the steps have been measured, uh, respectful of the welfare of the Iranian citizens, they haven't been going after the destruction of cities or the destruction of even their energy infrastructure.

And so, what the president's trying to do is make sure they won't have a nuclear weapon. That's it. And that's why, uh, the impact on energy markets has been much smaller, uh, than people who saw this start feared. And it's because, the president has been so tactical in how he's managed the conflict.

[Crosstalk]

Do you agree though that if this continues there could be another depression?

No. That's, that's, it, it, that's not --

Well, that's what the president said. That's what he said.

No. It, it, no. It, it, if, if this were to turn into something that, that was taking out all the oil of the Middle East, then one would have to think about something like that, but that's not anybody's intent.

Just quickly on AI, President Trump says, um, he's going to host the AI summit in September with President Xi. So, what the U.S. is going to talk with China about AI?

Um, you know, that, that's, uh, something that, like, is gonna be negotiated with the Chinese, and so I can't, we need to get that figured out.

But is it ordinary for, you know --

I got one last one and then I gotta turn, yeah, into --

The president might see mortgage rates get down to [Inaudible]

Uh, a specific number, he thinks the industry rates could be way lower. Uh, he, every time I talk to him, he wonders why it is that we have the, amongst the highest interest rates in the world, and he's hopeful, uh, that the --

What do you tell --

4%, 5%?

Well, I think that, that in the end, what we have to do is, uh, have really sound economic policy. We've got real income growth right now, uh, so the wage, uh, weekly wages are growing much faster than inflation. Uh, for the typical construction manufacturing worker, it's between three and $4,000 since President Trump took office.

So that means people have more money in their pockets to buy houses, but we also need to do things like, remove regulations that make it hard to build new houses, which have been really holding up, uh, housing construction. And, uh, get, you know, basically supply side policies that put tower pressure on inflation so that the Fed has room to cut rates.

So, thank you very much everybody. Yeah.

[Crosstalk]