Hey, sir. Any chance we can get a few questions?
Hey Kevin, do you have a second to chat with us?
Mr. Hassett, do you have a quick two minutes?
Yeah, I have. Just a second.
I got a couple minutes.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Great.
It's my second one of the day.
I'll be staring right into the camera.
I know I appreciate your generosity on this. We missed the morning one, so we just wanted to catch up with you.
Oh, least it's nice out, right?
Okay.
Yeah.
I have one quick one. The White House is telling us the president wants to take his economic message on the road. What more can you tell us about that and what do you say to those Americans that may think that sounds like what President Biden did with his Bidenomics message on the road?
[Inaudible] at News Nation. I was hoping you could talk about the impact of the government shutdown now being over and the effort to get federal workers paid.
Well, Trumponomics works and Bidenomics doesn't. And so we've got lots of good news to report to the American people. And I think that people also could just look at their wallets and see that real incomes this year have already gone up by $1,200. And so the affordability gap that was created by Biden's runaway inflation is gradually being whittled away by the higher growth that we have and the no tax on tips and no tax on overtime and so on. And so President Trump for sure is going to go out there and deliver the message.
Our Council of Economic Advisers said that it cost about 15 million a week and it accumulates to maybe 1, 1.5% of GDP when you account for multiplier effects. And their current estimate is that 60,000 Americans, non-government workers have lost their jobs because of the reduced economic output.
But in the end, the most important message is going to be what people see in their pockets, which is higher incomes and basically a higher ability to spend.
Affordability has become a key word after election day last week. How has President Trump, from your perspective, made things more affordable for Americans?
Kevin, how are you reading the markets' movement today? Are you concerned?
The first thing that we've done is we've stopped the runaway inflation. And the second thing we've done is we've pushed policies that have caused incomes to grow a lot. But we understand that people understand as they look at their pocketbooks that go to the grocery store, that there's still work to do. The way I summarize all the stats we look at is that real purchasing power for a typical worker dropped $3,400 under President Biden and has gone up $1,200 so far today.
You never know really why markets move, but the story of today is that it's because markets are thinking that the Fed is less likely to cut rates. If you look at the Federal fund's futures, they are quite a bit lower today, and I think that that's because of some of the speeches that we've been reading from Federal Reserve officials.
But Americans rightly are frustrated that they're still 2,000 short and that's something that we're going to fix. We're going to fix it right away.
But I would just remind that, based on fundamentals, the two things that changed since the last meeting, or second to last meeting, are that we had a shutdown that lowered estimates to GDP by 1 to 1.5%, and we had inflation numbers that were much lower than expected. And so the fact that the Fed would move from a posture of three rate cuts to two, after getting news that really says the opposite, makes you really wonder what they're thinking over there.
Kevin, [Inaudible] negotiators were coming to D.C. last night to talk to [Inaudible] about a great deal. Do you expect [Inaudible] agreement there?
Do you think the administration is going to call for a rate cut? Should we expect to see the president call for that again?
I wasn't participating in that conversation last night, so I've not been read in yet.
The president will say what the president wants to say, I'm sure.
On the economic impact of the [Inaudible] you mentioned that it will impact the GDP. I don't know the GDP number, and what magnitude?
Kevin, how do you interpret the recent election results, where you had the Democratic sweep and a lot of voters had cited unhappiness about the way they feel about the economy and how the administration has been handling it?
It's about 1 to 1.5%. I think that at the beginning of the quarter we were expecting a 3 to 4% GDP number in the fourth quarter, which would be consistent with the numbers over the last two quarters. Now you're looking at something about half of that.
Well, again, I think that if you look at a person, the typical American, who, when President Trump left office, would spend $400 a month on their groceries, having to spend about $515 on their groceries after the Biden administration's four-year run, then we've reduced inflation dramatically. But the difference between 400 and 515 is still a real hardship for the American people.
Kevin, how realistic are these $2,000 tariff checks that the president wants to send to all Americans? Is that actually going to happen?
And so we're working overtime on reducing costs, both at the micro level, with our efforts on eggs, you remember, and meat. But at the macro level too, we've reduced the deficit so far this year by 300 something billion dollars already in this calendar year. And that gives you a much lower impulse for inflation at the macroeconomic side too.
It's something that will require legislation. But if you look at how much tariff revenue has been coming in, then there would actually be enough room to cover those checks and not go into the rest of the budget. So yeah, there would be enough money to pay for the $2,000 checks.
So we're doing everything we can to fix it. But I can understand why people are still frustrated, because with 5% inflation year after year under Joe Biden, there was a massive hole that was dug by their policies that we're filling in right now.
Are you actively working with Congress to try to make that happen?
And so what would you say to Americans who are continuing to feel the pinch? And for small businesses, who are also feeling the effect of some of the whiplash with the tariffs?
We're actively studying the matter and getting the numbers straight so the president has all the choices he needs to decide what to do.
That we're making up ground fast. We're making up ground fast. Thank you, guys.
-- when can furloughed employees expect to get paid back?
Thank you.
People were actually brought back in as essential employees a couple days early, so that the furloughed employees could get their checks as soon as possible. And I was really pleased to see some of my furloughed employees show up today. There's a lot of hugging and smiling. I think that the payments will come probably early next week.
Next week?
Maybe even before, there really has been an aggressive effort to get people to get their checks as soon as possible.
Can you talk about the lack of economic data? How much is that going to impact you going forward, especially as you're talking about that issue of affordability?
The September jobs report has already been cooked and we expect we might get that next week. It just hadn't been released. The October employment report for the payroll side will be able to be calculated, but the household survey wasn't completed, so we'll get half a jobs report. Most everything else, I think, we'll be able to concoct the correct number after we look back.
But we will never know what the unemployment rate was in October because there wasn't a household survey. With that, I thank you all for your attention.
Thank you.