The following is a transcript of an interview with Kevin Hassett, Director of the National Economic Council and a key economic advisor to President Trump, conducted on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on July 6, 2025.
The discussion began with a moment of reflection for the victims in Texas, with Hassett emphasizing the administration’s commitment to providing federal support for recovery efforts. Turning to trade policy, Hassett outlined that significant developments were expected in the coming week regarding reciprocal tariffs. He noted that several trade agreements had already been finalized with countries such as the UK and Vietnam, while negotiations with China were nearing completion. Additionally, letters would be sent to other nations outlining U.S. expectations for trade terms, particularly concerning market access and tariff structures.
When asked about potential extensions of the 90-day tariff pause set to expire on Wednesday, Hassett emphasized the administration’s openness to dialogue but noted that final decisions rested with the President. He also addressed concerns about shifting deadlines and the challenges this poses for businesses and international partners, highlighting that the broad outlines of trade agreements were becoming clearer and that companies were increasingly relocating production to the U.S., driven by the administration’s trade strategy.
The conversation then shifted to the recently passed “Big, Beautiful Bill,” which has sparked debate over its fiscal impact. While independent analyses from institutions like the Yale Budget Lab and the Tax Foundation project increases in the national debt ranging from $3 trillion to $5 trillion over the next decade, Hassett defended the administration’s projection of a $1.5 trillion deficit reduction. He argued that these projections rely on outdated economic models and fail to account for the potential for robust economic growth—specifically citing a 3% annual growth rate, which he believes will significantly boost tax revenues.
Hassett also addressed concerns about Medicaid coverage, disputing the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) estimate that up to 12 million Americans could lose coverage due to new work requirements. He argued that many of those projected to lose coverage already have alternative insurance and pointed to historical data showing that work requirements in 2017 did not lead to a decline in insured individuals. Instead, he claimed, employment growth led to increased insurance coverage.
Regarding health care subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, Hassett acknowledged concerns but maintained that the bill includes provisions to protect rural hospitals, including a $50 billion trust fund to ensure continued access to care.
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Transcript: Kevin Hassett, National Economic Council director, on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” July 6, 2025
The following is the transcript of an interview with Kevin Hassett, National Economic Council director, that aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on July 6, 2025. n nWEIJA JIANG: We turn now to Kevin Hassett. He is the director of the National Economic Council and one of President Trump ‘s top advisors. He ‘s also very popular on that driveway where I ‘m usually alongside about a dozen reporters. So, Kevin, thank you so much for your time this morning. I want to start with trade, because there ‘s a big deadline coming up on Wednesday. As you know, that 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs that the President announced back in April is set to end. So far, the US has announced a few deals; the UK, Vietnam, and you ‘re inching closer to a final agreement with China. Do you expect to get any more deals done with America ‘s biggest trading partners by Wednesday? n nKEVIN HASSETT: Yeah. First, I do have to take- take a pause and share your thoughts and prayers with the people of Texas. It ‘s an incredible, heartbreaking story, and Kristi Noem and the President have instructed the federal government to throw everything they ‘ve got at helping the survivors and helping clean up that place. So, anyway, I ‘m really heartbroken today to see these stories, and I want you to know that in the White House, everybody is putting every effort they can into helping the people of Texas today. On trade, there ‘s going to be quite a bit of news this week. And, I think, the headline of the news is that there are going to be deals that are finalized. There are a whole number that Jameson Greer has negotiated with foreign governments, and then they ‘re going to be letters that are sent to countries saying, here ‘s how we think it ought to go, because the deals aren’t advanced enough. And the headline is going to be that countries are agreeing around the world to open their markets up to our products, and to allow us to put some kind of tariff on their products when they come into the US. At exactly what the numbers will be, will be things that you ‘ll find out in the news this week,. n nWEIJA JIANG: Kevin, you said there are going to be deals. For those really important trading partners, if there ‘s not a deal by Wednesday, is the President going to extend this pause? n nKEVIN HASSETT: You know, the United States is always willing to talk to everybody about everything that ‘s going on in the world. And there are deadlines, and there are things that are close, and so maybe things will push back the dead- past the deadline, or maybe they want- in the end, the President ‘s going to make that judgment. n nWEIJA JIANG: And you also mentioned those letters that will start going out tomorrow, according to President Trump. He said about 10 to 12 countries will receive them. Do you- can you tell us who ‘s going to get one and what they say? n nKEVIN HASSETT: Because- because, again, the part of the letter that could be happening right is that we ‘re close to a deal, we ‘re not really satisfied with the progress that we ‘re making at the deal, and so we ‘re saying, okay, fine, we ‘re going to send a letter, but maybe you get a deal at the last minute too. Until we see everything that plays out, I think that we need to just hold our fire and watch for the news this week. n nWEIJA JIANG: Is it fair to say that those notices are going to go to our smaller trading partners, as you negotiate with our bigger ones? n nKEVIN HASSETT: I think that it could be that it ‘ll be both. But also, don ‘t forget, that when we have great trade deals, our smaller trading partners could become much bigger trading partners. And that ‘s, I think, one of the reasons why countries are racing to set deals up with us ahead of the deadline. n nWEIJA JIANG: I have to ask you about the deadlines, Kevin, to make these deals, because you just mentioned you ‘re always open. The president said there ‘s not really any flexibility left between now and Wednesday. Less than two weeks ago, the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that deals would be wrapped up by Labor Day. So, I wonder, you know, if- how can companies plan if the goal posts keep moving? How can countries negotiate if they don ‘t even know how much time they have left? n nKEVIN HASSETT: Right. Well, the rough outlines of the deals are becoming clear to everybody, because we have some deals like the UK, and the Vietnam deal that are starting to be, you know, I guess, guidelines for what might happen. But, one of the things that we ‘re seeing that ‘s really interesting to me, is that people are just on-shoring production of the US at a record rate. As we ‘ve had record job creation, record capital spending, and this is even ahead of the Big, Beautiful Bill. And so, I think what ‘s happening is that people are responding to President Trump ‘s, you know, potential threats to have high tariffs on countries by moving their activity here into the US, which is creating jobs, more than 2 million jobs, since he took office, and raising wages. You know, wage growth is heading up towards the really, really high pinnacles that we saw in 2017. And so, I think there ‘s a race right now to get activity into the US. And, in part, that race has been kicked off by President Trump. n nWEIJA JIANG: I remember after these reciprocal tariffs were announced, you told me that there were about 15 deals that countries were bringing to the President. How close, if you could give us any number at all, what number are we going to see this week? n nKEVIN HASSETT: Yeah, you ‘ll have- you ‘ll have to get that from Jameson and the President. I think that, you know, we ‘ve seen lots of deals that have been finalized by our negotiators, and then the President finds things that could make them better. And so, it ‘s- I ‘m not going to get ahead of the President on the number of deals. n nWEIJA JIANG: Okay, thanks, Kevin. We ‘ll look out for that. I want to move now to the One Big, Beautiful Bill that, of course, the President signed into law on Independence Day. You have it, and now you have to pay for it. And there ‘s a consensus that this bill adds tremendously to the deficit. I know that you are so familiar with these numbers. The Yale Budget Lab estimates it will add $3 trillion to the debt. The Tax Foundation says this tax portion of the bill could also add $3 trillion to the deficit. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which factors in interest on the debt, says it could add up to $5 trillion over the next decade. And on this very program, even Speaker Johnson answered in the affirmative when asked if this bill would add over $4 trillion to the deficit. I know that the administration says the bill will actually shrink the deficit by $1.5 trillion. Help me understand why there is such a drastic difference between your number and all those others. n nKEVIN HASSETT: Well- well, first of all, let ‘s remember that science is not democracy. Truth is not democracy. Our estimates are based on modeling that we used last time, when I was Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to say what would happen if we had a bill, how much growth we would get. And we said, and we were criticized soundly, that we would get 3% growth. And we even had the really technical macroeconomic models that said that we would get 3% growth. We run the same models through this tax bill, it ‘s even better. And what we ‘re seeing is that if you get 3% growth again, then that ‘s $4 trillion more in revenue than the CBO and these other bodies are giving us credit for. They have been wrong in the past, and they ‘re being wrong again, in our belief. But, the thing that disappoints me is that if I put out a model and I say, hey, here ‘s what ‘s going to happen, we ‘re going to get 3% growth. And then it turns out it ‘s 1.5% growth, then, as an academic economist, as a scientist, then it ‘s my duty to say, what did I get wrong? What did my model miss? These people aren ‘t doing that. And that ‘s the thing that I find disappointing, because we put peer-reviewed academic stuff on the table, said we ‘re going to get that 3% growth, and then we got it right last time, and we believe we ‘re going to get it right this time. But, if you think that 1.8% growth is what ‘s going to happen over the next 10 years, then you should agree with the CBO number. But, there ‘s another part of the CBO number that you need to worry about. And that is that if we don ‘t pass the bill, that it ‘s the biggest tax hike in history. And with that big tax hike, that of course, we would have a recession. The CEA says that we ‘d have about a 4% drop in GDP and lose 9 million jobs. If we had a 4% drop in GDP and we lost 9 million jobs, what would happen to the deficit? And so, I don ‘t think that the CBO has a very strong record. I don ‘t think these places have a very strong record. And what they need to do is get back to the basics of looking at macroeconomic models. There ‘s a really famous macroeconomist at Harvard named Jim Stock. They should go back and read everything Jim Stock has written for the last 15 years, and fold those into their models, and then maybe we could talk. n nWEIJA JIANG: I want to talk too, Kevin, about another number that I know you and the President disagree with, but that Democrats and many Republicans are worried about, and that ‘s the CBO ‘s projection that as many as 12 million Americans could lose Medicaid coverage because of this law. What is the NEC ‘s estimate for how many people could lose coverage? n nKEVIN HASSETT: Well- well, yeah. Let ‘s- let ‘s unbundle that a little bit. Because, first, on the CBO coverage, so what are we doing? So, what we ‘re doing is we ‘re asking for a work requirement. But, the work requirement is that you need to be looking for work, or even doing volunteer work, and you don ‘t need to do it until your kids are 14 or older. And so, the idea that that ‘s going to cause a massive hemorrhaging in availability of insurance, doesn ‘t make a lot of sense to us. And then, if you look at the CBO numbers, if you look at the big numbers, they say that people are going to lose insurance. About 5 million of those are people who have other insurance. They ‘re people who have two types of insurance. And so, therefore, if they lose one, they ‘re still insured. And so, the CBO numbers on that side don ‘t make any sense to us at all. But, on the other side, go back to 2017 when we had work requirements for Obamacare, they said that we lose about 4 million insured between 2017 and 2019, and about double that over the next 10 years. And, in fact, the number of insured went up. It went up quite a bit, by more than 10 million over those two years, because the bottom line is, the best way to get insurance is to get a job. And we ‘ve got a Big, Beautiful Bill that ‘s going to create a lot of job creation and a lot of insurance, and the CBO is just not accounting for that. And again, they need to go back and look at all the things that they got wrong. You realize that they ‘re underestimating Medicaid spending by 20%. They should look back at all the things they got wrong, and explain what they ‘re going to do to get it right in the future, and to do a better job. And if they do that, we ‘ll take them more seriously. But right now, I don ‘t think any serious thinker could take them seriously, because they ‘ve done so wrong, and wrong for so long. Even back- if you go back to when President Obama passed Obamacare, they got every single number there wrong about how many people would get private insurance and how few people would get Medicaid, and so on. And so, their record in this modeling space is about as bad as it ‘s possible to be. In fact, you could, kind of, roll the roulette wheel and come up with a better set of numbers, better history, track record than CBO. n nWEIJA JIANG: Kevin, what about the enhanced subsidies? Is that number wrong too? That the ACA allows about $705 for people to help pay for their health insurance. That doesn ‘t sound like the waste, fraud, and abuse that I know you and the President have talked about eliminating. That just sounds like people who cannot afford coverage, and now it ‘s going to be even more so with the subsidies gone. n nKEVIN HASSETT: Right. Well- well, if you ‘re- if you ‘re looking at the- the change in the tax on the providers, which is something that has been a key talking point for the Democrats, they say that that ‘s going to close down rural hospitals. What has happened is that, rather than let the states- the states have this game where they give a dollar to a hospital and then the federal government matches the dollar, and then the state taxes some of the dollar away. In other words, that we have an agreement with the states that they ‘re going to match, but then they have this they have this trick where they tax the hospitals after they give them the money, so really, it ‘s the federal government giving them the money. And that ‘s why we ‘ve been overspending Medicaid by 20% since this trick started happening. And so, what we ‘ve done is that we ‘ve put a haircut on that. But, we ‘ve also put $50 billion into a trust fund to make sure that the rural hospitals are there to treat the sick. So, I think this is a prudent form. It ‘s sound budgetary politics. And I think that nobody ‘s going to lose their insurance. n nWEIJA JIANG: Kevin Hassett, we will watch for how that ages. Thank you very much. Really appreciate — n nKEVIN HASSETT: – And if I get it wrong, we ‘ll check, and we ‘ll talk about why I got it wrong. I promise. n nWEIJA JIANG: Thank you. We ‘ll have you back. Thank you very much, Kevin.