Jason Furman: How Would the Economy Do Under Trump or Harris?

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2024

⏱️ 61 minutes

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Summary

How would the economy do under a Trump or Harris administration? To discuss, we are joined again by the distinguished Harvard economist Jason Furman, who was Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in President Obama’s second term. Furman shares his perspective on a wide variety of subjects including tariffs, trade policy with allies and adversaries, the dangers of a politicized Fed, inflation, and immigration. Forecasting economic policies under the two potential administrations, Furman contends that Kamala Harris would track Biden’s policies to some degree, but “her instincts are just a little bit more towards wanting to pal around with CEOs than labor leaders relative to Joe Biden.” As for Trump, Furman argues that “there’s one Trump, with responsible advisors, who doesn’t do anything he says on the campaign and things turn out basically fine. There’s another Trump who does follow through, and that could be a downside for growth and a large downside in terms of higher inflation.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome back to Conversations. I'm very pleased to be
0:18.7	joined again by Jason Furman. Professor Economics at Harvard teaches the key introduction to economics course there at 10
0:25.1	head of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Obama. Lots of experience
0:29.8	in Washington, lots of experience in thinking about economic policy and explaining it clearly and
0:35.1	cogently, as he has done on several conversations with me.
0:39.8	So Jason, thanks very much for joining me again.
0:42.8	Thanks for having me again.
0:44.8	Our last conversation I think was in June,
0:46.5	and we discussed the soft landing, which seems to have happened softly
0:49.9	and pretty successfully.
0:51.6	But I think today, what would be helpful to people
0:54.0	it's for to it's Tuesday what is it October 8th four weeks out from the election
0:58.1	is to talk about the contrasting economic plans and policies of the two candidates so we can talk about how
1:06.1	much of them will actually go into effect but they are for all the talk that there hasn't
1:09.9	been that much policy in this campaign which may be true, compared to some other earlier campaigns,
1:15.9	they have laid out economic plans that are pretty distinct, haven't they, Jason?
1:20.3	Oh yeah, they definitely have laid out plans. Hers is more specific than his. And, you know,
1:30.5	broadly speaking, I characterize the Harris approach as if she's president, you're going to
1:36.7	get less of the same.
1:38.8	It's going to be like Biden, but a bit less than a number of dimensions. A bit less in part because you don't have the context of the pandemic, which led to this huge response.
1:48.0	A bit less because there was even some burn, you know, being burned by some of the larger things. The Senate is
1:58.1	two-thirds chance of being Republican if she's elected president.
	...

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