President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday selected Kevin Hassett to serve as the director of the National Economic Council (NEC), with Hassett set to return after he served as a key economic adviser during Trump’s first term in the White House.
Trump said in a statement that Hassett will “play an important role in helping American families recover from the Inflation that was unleashed by the Biden Administration,” and that, “Together, we will renew and improve our record Tax Cuts, and ensure that we have Fair Trade with Countries that have taken advantage of the United States in the past.”
The president-elect added that Hassett “will also play a key role in strengthening our Economic relationships with Allies, new and old, while also securing Prosperity for the American People.”
Hassett, 62, currently works as a managing director at the Milken Institute and is the Brent R. Nicklas Distinguished Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He holds a doctorate in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
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As NEC director, Hassett will play a central role in developing the incoming Trump administration’s economic policies in collaboration with other agencies and advisers.
During Trump’s first term, Hassett served as the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) from 2017 to 2019. The CEA provides economic research to the White House, essentially serving as an in-house economic analysis consultancy.
Hassett was confirmed to the CEA chairmanship on a Senate vote of 81-16 about two months before the Trump administration and congressional Republicans passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. He has been a defender of the Trump administration’s economic policies, including the landmark tax cuts – some of which are due to expire next year.
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Unlike the CEA role, the director of the National Economic Council (NEC) is a presidentially appointed position that doesn’t require Senate confirmation.
After Hassett departed the Trump administration in 2019, he returned a year later amid the COVID pandemic to advise the president on economic policy amid the public health restrictions that were in place.
Previously, Hassett was the chief economic adviser to John McCain’s presidential campaign during the 2000 Republican primaries.
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He later served as a senior economic adviser to the campaigns of George W. Bush in 2004, McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012. Hassett was also the research director at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior economist at the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors.
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