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You're Hired: Tracking the Trump Administration Transition - April 17, 2017
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This is the April 17, 2017, edition of an email sent from November 2016 to September 2017 that covered Donald Trump's presidential transition, cabinet appointees, and the different policy positions of those individuals who may have had an effect on the new administration. Previous editions of "You're Hired" can be found here.
Last week, we highlighted developments in the relationship between President Trump, his chief strategist Steve Bannon, and senior advisor Jared Kushner. In today’s edition of You’re Hired, we’re going to run through another top advisor to Trump: Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council. Until joining Trump’s administration, Cohn was president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs, a company he had worked for since 1990.
Cohn is the president’s top economic advisor and has been linked as an ally to Kushner as part of a more moderate wing of White House staff members. The perspective of this group of advisors stands in contrast to that of Bannon and his top deputy, Stephen Miller. For more details on Bannon’s politics, see our Friday edition.
What did Cohn do at Goldman Sachs?
Cohn joined Goldman Sachs in 1990 after working for U.S. Steel and then as an options trader. His initial work with Goldman Sachs was in J. Aron, the firm’s commodities trading division. By 1996, Cohn was directing the global commodity business for Goldman Sachs; he became responsible for the company's mortgage market activity in 2000; and he managed Goldman's global securities businesses (which trade stocks, bonds, commodities, and currency) beginning in 2003.
In 2006, he was appointed president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs.
How did he join the Trump administration?
Cohn initially joined the administration during the transition, when he was introduced to Jared Kushner by a former Hollywood agent, Michael Ovitz. According to The New York Times, the two got along well, and Kushner had Cohn meet Trump to discuss economic policy in December 2016. During their initial meeting, the story goes, Trump mentioned a plan to spend $1 billion on infrastructure, which Cohn said would need private partnerships. Since that meeting, according to the paper, Cohn “has become the go-to figure on matters related to jobs, business and growth.”
Cohn officially joined the Trump administration on December 10, 2016, as the director of the National Economic Council. The responsibilities of the director involve advising Trump on domestic and international economic policy as well as working to implement legislation that supports Trump’s economic policy agenda.
What has he done in the White House so far?
In the roughly three months since inauguration, Cohn has had three major areas of focus as director of the National Economic Council.
- He has worked to hire more staff and policy advisors. Since January, Cohn has hired D.J. Gribbin to help with infrastructure plans and Shahira Knight for tax issues. Other additions to Cohn staff include Kenneth Juster (an international economics expert), Jeremy Katz (a former George W. Bush official), and Ray Starling (an agricultural economics expert).
- His major policy push so far has been to work on proposals for implementing Trump’s desired rewrite of the federal tax code for individuals and corporations. Trump has called for reducing the number of tax brackets from seven to three and cutting the corporate tax rate to no higher than 15 percent. Earlier this month, Orin Snyder, a lawyer and a friend of Cohn’s, told Reuters, “Gary's singular focus is tax reform and he's working to try and get that done in 2017. ... He is working to implement the president's twin goals of economic growth and job creation. The tax plan will also include a reduction in the corporate rate, but also tax relief for middle- and low-income Americans.”
- The other major initiative for Cohn has been Trump’s proposed infrastructure spending. During the campaign, Trump said that U.S. airports “are like from a third world country” and proposed to fund infrastructure spending with a system in which “citizens would put money into the fund and we will rebuild our infrastructure with that fund.” He has been working to find ways in which that plan can be funded with joint funding from the government and private industry. The Washington Post reported that Cohn has “toyed with an idea that would pair $200 billion in taxpayer money with $800 billion in additional funds, mostly from private investors.”
Where does he fit among White House staff?
Last week, we detailed some of the differences in White House staff politics. On Friday, we outlined chief strategist Steve Bannon’s politics, noting:
| “ | Bannon’s political perspective is a bit difficult to pin down. According to a 2015 Bloomberg feature, the kind of conservatism that drives Bannon’s thought and his work at Breitbart is 'as eager to go after establishment Republicans such as [John] Boehner or Jeb Bush as Democrats like Clinton.' Politico Magazine has also described Bannon’s public remarks as suggesting 'a sense that humanity is at a hinge point in history' and that 'only a shock to the system can reverse [Western civilization’s] decline.'
In a 2014 interview with The New York Times, Bannon described his politics, saying, 'There is a growing global anti-establishment revolt against the permanent political class at home, and the global elites that influence them, which impacts everyone from Lubbock, Texas, to London, England. … We look at London and Texas as two fronts in our current cultural and political war.'[1] |
” |
Cohn—who had been a registered Democrat prior to joining Trump’s administration—represents the more moderate wing of Trump’s staff and has been most closely aligned with Jared Kushner, the president’s senior advisor and son-in-law. According to Vox, these two are the leaders of “an informal group of aides that has been pushing for the administration to take a more establishment-friendly turn.”
To date, the Bannon-aligned portion of the staff has disagreed with Cohn mostly over two issues: Cohn’s suggestion of a carbon tax and Cohn’s belief that the U.S. should remain more involved in international institutions and trade deals. In private conversations, according to Axios, the more conservative members of Trump’s staff who align with Bannon refer to Cohn as “Carbon Tax Cohn” and “Globalist Gary.” Cohn has also come out against a border adjustment tax—an additional tariff on imports—one of Bannon’s ideas.
See also
- You're Hired: Tracking the Trump Administration Transition
- Donald Trump presidential transition team
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- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
