[Inaudible] the deals, the letters?
It's still coming out today, not -- not too bad. Matter of fact, just give me --
Yeah.
Give me a couple of clips on the Fed. Hey, Peter Navarro here. A great piece in The Hill op-ed on the nomination of Jay Powell as the worst Fed chairman in history. And I want -- I want to just share with you, the American people, the case against Powell. It's really important to understand that we're in a situation now where the Federal Reserve is holding interest rates artificially high contrary to the data.
They should be at least 50 basis points lower, maybe more. And why does that matter to you, the American people? Let me count the ways. If you think about rates that are 50 percent higher than they should be, that's a loss of about a quarter to a half point of real domestic -- gross domestic product growth, and that translates into lost jobs to the tune of about 750,000 jobs we don't create.
It translates into lost tax revenues. And when the Fed holds rates higher than it otherwise should, 50 basis points higher, for example, the -- we have to pay for our national debt, and about 20 to 30 percent of that debt is financed through short term debt rather than long term bonds. So, if you're paying 50 percent higher, that's a couple hundred billion dollars added to our debt because of higher interest costs.
So, he's making a really big mistake. And -- and what I do in the op-ed in the Hill is I talk about how this is not Powell's first major blunder, it's his third. And let me -- let me walk you through that. When I was here -- standing right here years ago during the first Trump administration, Jay Powell decided to raise rates even though there was no sign of inflation.
He just didn't understand Trumpnomics. He was seeing our tariffs. He was seeing our tax cuts. He was seeing what we were doing in energy policy deregulation. He didn't understand that that was going to create robust economic growth without inflation, and he went ahead and raised interest rates. And the Fed's own analysis after the fact showed that we lost about a point of gross domestic product growth, which is -- which is like -- that's trillions of dollars over time.
When Biden was in the White House, Powell wanted to get reappointed so he coddled up to Joe Biden. And the practical result of that was he refused to raise rates even as inflation was rising dramatically. And then once he got appointed he raised the rates, but it was too late and we wound up with that horrible inflation.
And the other thing I hold Jay Powell accountable for during the Biden years, it's the responsibility of the Federal Reserve chairman to speak out if the executive branch or the legislative branch are acting fiscally irresponsible. So, even as Biden and the Democrat Congress were passing these incredibly fiscally irresponsible bills, like the misnomer of the Inflation Reduction Act and all the trillions of dollars of debt they added, Powell kept his mouth shut, didn't say a word.
All he did was accommodate -- that's the Fed lingo, accommodate the inflation by printing money and keeping rates too low for too long. And so, he was very much implicated in all this. And now he comes along, and he's -- he's sitting there saying, well, I'm not going to lower rates. I don't know what the tariffs are going to do. It's like, hey, Jay, what happened in the first term?
It's like nothing. We had zero inflation from the tariffs. So, this is a serious problem for the American people that the Federal Reserve is causing. What I'm suggesting is, at the July 29/30 meeting of the board of governors, that if Jay Powell continues down this path of refusing to lower rates when the data says he should, that the rest of the board of governors should just simply vote to do what should be done, which is to lower rates.
The last thing I should say, that the interesting part of The Hill piece is -- for you journalists is a little bit of background history. I -- I've worked my way through bad Fed chairs and good, right? The -- one of the bad ones was Arthur Burns, who, during the Nixon years, helped Nixon get reelected by printing a bunch of money in -- going into the '72 election, and that unleashed the stagflation.
And then the guy named G William Miller was head of the Fed, succeeded Burns, and he was so bad they got rid of him in -- like in 500 days. And like Powell, he's a lawyer, not an economist. The only two guys who've been lawyers have been Powell and Miller, and what they share in common is -- is a terrible performance.
And then you had Greenspan. I'm old enough to remember, maybe there's a few of you here who remember that Greenspan was the guy who didn't understand that -- that technology in the '90s was going to be productivity enhancing and hold inflation down. And he talked about irrational exuberance, raised rates, and what did we have?
We had a stock market crash. So, that was a major blunder. And then Bernanke, Ben Bernanke, going into the -- what would turn out to be the Great Recession and stock market crash, he underestimated the level of systemic risk and he didn't act quick enough, and he turned what could have been a manageable crisis into what was almost a total meltdown.
So, there's -- Powell has a lot of competition for bad Fed chair, but all of the people I mentioned only made one mistake. Powell's on his third here. So, I think this is a good thing, and I hope you'll write about it, look at it, look at my piece and do that. Here's what I'll promise you. I'll come back here tomorrow and talk about the tariffs issue, because the letters are still coming out and it's not systematic now.
But I will -- I'll come back tomorrow when we get, like, a good -- good set. The thing -- the one thing I'll say about it is that we have a situation where the world cheats us, and we have 15 major countries that account for something like 95 percent of the trade deficit we run. And what's -- what -- in the -- in our negotiations, what we're seeing is they're -- have it so good screwing the American people, I just gotta tell it like it is, that they're reluctant to give up their advantage.
So, what the --
[Inaudible]
What the president -- what the president -- I'll come back tomorrow. I mean, can --
But you personally said 90 deals --
90 days --
In 90 days.
And 90 days. I -- I'm very happy.
[Inaudible] to that?
I'm very happy --
I mean, what do you say to voters?
I am very happy with where we're at. We have had a global baseline tariff in place of 10 percent. We're collecting billions of dollars of tax revenues --
But it's not 90 deals --
That are going --
In 90 days.
That are going to pay down --
What do you say to people who feel misled?
For tax cuts. We've got continuing negotiations, and I think this is great. But I'll come back --
Why --
Tomorrow and answer these questions.
Why were there not 90 deals in 90 days?
Because the rest of the world has it so good that they're dragging their heels. But the president will not allow that. That's why the letters went out.
Then why should countries --
That's all I'll say.
Then why should countries take the --
I'll come back --
Administration --
Tomorrow.
Seriously --
I'll --
That you guys are not going to push the August 1st deadline back even further and that those tariffs will actually go into effect?
It doesn't matter in the sense that we're collecting billions of dollars on behalf of the American people and -- and --
Should they take the administration seriously?
The negotiations are going well. Anyway, that's --
Peter, on the Fed chair --
I will come -- oh, the Fed chair, ok. Sure.
Are you -- as the White House is looking for a new Fed chair, are you weighing in --
I'm not here to weigh into that debate. No, I -- my --
So, you aren't part of the interviews --
No, no, no, no, no --
For Fed chair?
Absolutely not. My -- my -- my expertise, Jennifer, as you know, here as -- is as a macro economist. I've been writing about Powell going back to the first term and the Fed long before that. And it just -- it troubles me that Powell -- it's not well understood how badly Powell has performed. I mean, fact check me on that.
Read the Hill. If there's anything I've said that's inaccurate, I think -- I think it's just a fact of the matter that Powell's made two major blunders. There's no question about that, two major blunders. He was too early Powell in the first Trump term, too late Powell in the Biden term. And the only question is whether what he's doing now is -- is -- is -- is -- is wrong and causing more trouble.
And that's an open question, but -- but the data tells me that he's wrong, ok?
Is anybody else in the administration reaching out to the board with your suggestion about --
I have no -- no -- no visibility --
No, I get it.
On it. All right.
Why can't you answer questions on --
We'll see you guys --
Trade today, Peter?
Tomorrow.
Why -- why tomorrow?
We'll come tomorrow.
Why can't you answer this today?
Because, as you know, letters are still going out. Things are still being done.
But the deadline is --
And I'd never get ahead of the president.
July 9th. Are you still involved in those trade negotiations?
The leads are Howard and Jamieson and, with certain countries, Scott. And I -- I have a lot of duties helping them out in the support role. They're the leads, ok? Ok. Great. Thanks.