WASHINGTON \u2014 President Donald Trump has chosen Larry Kudlow to be his top economic aide, elevating the influence of a long-time fixture on the CNBC business news network who previously served in the Reagan administration and has emerged as a leading evangelist for tax cuts and a smaller government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kudlow told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he has accepted the offer, saying the U.S. economy is poised to take off after Trump signed $1.5 trillion worth of tax cuts into law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe economy is starting to roar and we\u2019re going to get more of that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kudlow will join an administration in the middle of a tumultuous remodeling as a wave of White House staffers and top officials have departed in recent weeks. Trump on Tuesday dumped via Twitter his secretary of state, former Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The famously pinstripe-suited Kudlow would succeed Gary Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs executive who is leaving the post in a dispute over Trump\u2019s decision to impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With Trump\u2019s tax cuts already being implemented, Kudlow would be advising a president who appears increasingly determined to tax foreign imports \u2014 a policy that Kudlow personally opposes. Kudlow said that he is \u201cin accord\u201d with Trump\u2019s agenda and that his team at the White House would help implement the policies set by the president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump has promised to reduce the trade imbalance with China and rewrite the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. Kudlow declined to say what advice he would give the president on trade issues, saying, instead that Trump is \u201ca very good negotiator.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kudlow, 70, has informally advised the Trump administration in the past and he has spoken with the president \u201cat some length in recent days,\u201d so that he is ready \u201cto hit the ground running.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Friends and colleagues say Kudlow possesses two critical attributes prized by the president: He is a bluntly spoken debater and is resolutely loyal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a very sensitive man and a very logical man, which is exactly what Trump needs,\u201d said Arthur Laffer, a well-known economist and longtime friend of Kudlow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The two men and their wives used to celebrate New Year\u2019s Eve together outside San Diego where Laffer lived at the time. In the Reagan administration, Kudlow worked in the White House budget office, and Laffer served on an economic policy advisory board. Both built their economic visions around the notion that tax cuts are critical for maximizing economic growth, a principle at the heart of the $1.5 trillion tax reduction Trump signed into law late last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1987, Kudlow moved to Wall Street and, though he never completed a master\u2019s program in economics and policy at Princeton University, served as chief economist at Bear Stearns. He left that position in the early 1990s to treat an addiction to alcohol and drugs, after which Kudlow worked at Laffer\u2019s research and consulting firm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kudlow soon settled comfortably into the world of political and economic punditry, working at the conservative National Review magazine and ultimately becoming a host of CNBC shows beginning in 2001. He has remained a contributor to CNBC and a colleague and friend for many at the network. Indeed, among the first to report on Kudlow\u2019s possible move to the White House was Jim Cramer, the stock market guru and his former co-host on \u201cKudlow & Cramer.\u201d It was on CNBC that Kudlow gained a high-profile platform for explaining, defending and \u2014 at times \u2014 faulting Trump\u2019s economic agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kudlow channeled his push for lower taxes into a 2016 book he co-wrote and in which he argued that President John F. Kennedy\u2019s tax cuts had boosted economic growth. The book, \u201cJFK and the Reagan Revolution,\u201d asserted that Reagan\u2019s 1980s tax cuts followed the same template. When Trump\u2019s own tax cuts ran into resistance over the higher budget deficits that would result, Kudlow downplayed the risks of debt. He argued on CNBC that Reagan ran even higher deficits to finance tax cuts and military spending \u2014 a formula that Kudlow contends helped accelerate growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kudlow has, at times, been overly optimistic \u2014 if not outright mistaken \u2014 about what Republican administrations can achieve for the economy. He declared in a December 2007 column for National Review that George W. Bush\u2019s presidency was ushering in a new golden era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no recession coming,\u201d Kudlow wrote. \u201cIt\u2019s not going to happen. At a bare minimum, we are looking at Goldilocks 2.0. (And that\u2019s a minimum). Goldilocks is alive and well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Economists later concluded that the Great Recession and the financial meltdown it triggered began the month that column was published.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Laffer described Kudlow as someone who would be inclined to offer \u201cunvarnished\u201d advice to the president on the appropriate path for economic policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAnd if by chance, he doesn\u2019t convince the president of something, he will be a loyal employee,\u201d Laffer said. \u201cHe stays loyal even if the decision goes against him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kudlow has shown himself willing to embrace personal transformations. He converted from Judaism to Catholicism, according to a 2000 interview with the religious magazine Crisis. And after graduating as a history major from the University of Rochester in 1969, he worked on Democratic campaigns in New York. But he evolved into a committed Republican who considered entering the 2016 race to challenge Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jared Bernstein, who was an economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden during Barack Obama\u2019s presidency, said he\u2019s been debating Kudlow from the opposite side of the ideological fence for decades and still likes him. Bernstein said he has never managed to convince Kudlow that that tax cuts that he has zealously championed have failed to deliver the promised growth, a view shared by many academic economists. But Kudlow understands trade, the Federal Reserve, employment, inflation and the financial markets, Bernstein said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAnd, at least on those issues, he listens,\u201d said Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For a president who pays close attention to image and wants advisers who look every inch the part, Kudlow seems to fit the role of high-powered presidential aide. Customarily attired in narrow-lapelled suits, Kudlow has relied on the same Savile Row-trained, New York-based tailor, Leonard Logsdail, for 26 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Logsdail said Kudlow still wears some of the first suits he made for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe does take care of them,\u201d the tailor said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Associated Press writers Catherine Lucey and Zeke Miller contributed to this story.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The famously pinstripe-suited Kudlow would succeed Gary Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs executive who is leaving the post in a dispute over Trump\u2019s decision to impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":60245,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":68,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[104,106,31,15,68,33],"tags":[],"coauthors":[5700],"class_list":["post-19538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-acquisition-update","category-daily-brief","category-home","category-management","category-leadership","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"2YGJINTIZVHIDAWXCEYBO4IXWU","arc_canonical_url":"\/management\/leadership\/2018\/03\/14\/trump-picks-camera-proven-larry-kudlow-as-top-economic-aide\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n