White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow suggests some chief executives may be blaming President Donald Trump's China trade tariffs as an excuse for their own company's poor performance.
Kudlow says he wanted to express his skepticism because CEOs "love to blame other factors outside to perhaps cover their own execution," without naming specific chief executives he was talking about.
"There are a lot of CEOs who come here and I visit with who are very positive and optimistic about the economy," the veteran financial guru and former Ronald Reagan adviser told CNBC.
Kudlow, who served as the Trump campaign's senior economic adviser, cited J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon and Apple CEO Tim Cook as optimists.
Kudlow, who declined to call out any companies by name as pessimists, said he wanted to express his skepticism because CEOs "love to blame other factors outside to perhaps cover their own execution."
“Money is flowing into the United States from all across the world. We are the hottest economy by far,” said Kudlow, who worked as Reagan’s budget deputy between 1981 and 1985. “I think this stuff will play out very, very positively.”
The Trump administration’s “America First” policies, which have left the United States embroiled in a bitter trade war with China and tit-for-tat tariffs with other trade partners, have raised the cost of some raw materials, Reuters explained.
President Donald Trump has imposed tariffs on Chinese goods worth $250 billion and has applied tariffs on steel and on foreign aluminum, which raised import and domestic costs. He has threatened tariffs on another $276 billion in Chinese products, which would touch nearly every imported good.
Meanwhile, a coalition of U.S. business groups fighting Trump’s trade tariffs has launched an advertisement aimed at telling voters ahead of the midterm elections that the measures are costing American businesses and consumers $1.4 billion a month.
The group says that in Michigan, a state with several competitive elections this fall, tariff costs tripled in August from a year earlier, while they more than doubled in places like Texas, Illinois and West Virginia.
Nationally, there was a 45 percent uptick in August compared with the previous August - and the organization cautions not all of the tariffs have gone into affect.
The group, which branded itself “Tariffs Hurt the Heartland,” crunched tariff payment data by state and nationally and provided the findings first to Reuters.
“These tariffs are taxes on American businesses and consumers,” said group spokeswoman Angela Hofmann. “They aren’t paid by other countries. They are paid here at home.”
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