Following Gary Cohn’s departure from the White House National Economic Council earlier this week, influential economic commentator and nationally syndicated columnist Larry Kudlow is set to become President Trump’s modern top economic adviser. A formal announcement of Kudlow’s nomination is expected on Thursday.
So who is Larry Kudlow? And what role is he likely to play in the Trump administration?
Born in 1947Kudlow grew up in the northern New Jersey suburb of Englewood, near Upper Manhattan. One of two Jewish students at a local prep school, Kudlow became interested in current events early on, when he was editor of the student newspaper.
Despite his family’s staunch support of Republican causes, Kudlow became an industrious anti-war student activist while attending the University of Rochester in the behind schedule 1960s. In fact, as a member of Students for a Democratic Society, a prominent “New Left” group known for its radical politics, Kudlow’s work organizing protests against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War brought him national attention as one of the subjects of a 1969 New Yorker profile of anti-war activist leaders.
After a brief stint as an activist and a brief stint studying politics and economics at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, Kudlow landed his first full-time job as a junior economist at the New York Federal Reserve. This was a true launching pad for many of his future life endeavors, as Kudlow used his position at the Fed to launch a career on Wall Street.
As part of that career, Kudlow worked for some of the top investment firms in the country at the time, including Bear Stearns and Paine Webber. Bear Stearns hired Kudlow in part because they admired his many pro-free-market commentaries in the press, and they apparently weren’t the only ones who noticed. Shortly after Ronald Reagan took office in 1980, Kudlow joined the White House as deputy director for economics and planning at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Along with OMB Director David Stockman, Kudlow helped lead a period of much-needed economic recovery after years of stagnation, unemployment and inflation in the behind schedule 1970s.A close ally of people like then-New York congressman Jack Kemp and economist Arthur Laffer, Kudlow was a sturdy advocate of cutting deficits and government spending as a way to stimulate economic growth.
In 1983, Kudlow left the Reagan Administration to return to the private sector, but he never retired from politics.
After leaving another gig at Bear Stearns in 1994 due to his struggles with cocaine and alcohol addiction and severe work-related stressKudlow has successfully transitioned into a full-time career as a financial and political commentator. As a senior contributor and host at CNBC and a contributing writer and editor at National ReviewKudlow has been a spirited source of commentary and debate on the national stage for the past two decades.
In 2016, Kudlow he served as an informal economic advisor to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Kudlow has largely supported the president and his policies over the past year, especially the GOP tax cut bill last December, which Kudlow praised as putting Trump and the Republican Party “on the side of the growth angels.”
While Kudlow also praised several of Trump’s other positions, including his stance on cutting federal government regulations, there were significant policy differences between them. Trump’s recent support for raising tariffs on foreign imports of steel and aluminum led Kudlow to co-author an op-ed with Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore opposing the move. As they explained [emphasis mine]:
President Donald Trump sincerely believes that his steel and aluminum tariffs will save thousands of blue-collar jobs. And we know from our interactions with him that he truly cares about those workers in Pennsylvania, Ohio and other Rust Belt states. We do too, and we don’t want to see factories shut down. But Even if tariffs save every one of America’s 140,000 steel jobs, 5 million manufacturing and related jobs that utilize steel would still be at risk. These producers must now compete in highly competitive international markets, using steel that is 20 percent more pricey than the world market price, and aluminum that is 7 to 10 percent more pricey than our foreign rivals.
In other words, steel and aluminum may win in the miniature term, but the users and consumers of steel and aluminum lose. In reality, Tariff increases are actually tax increases.
On Wednesday, Kudlow spoke to his colleagues from CNBC on his upcoming job in the Trump White House, emphasizing that he is looking forward to playing a role in the administration:
“I can’t wait to serve the president,” he said. “I was raised in the Reagan era, and you talk about it and argue about it, but once the president makes a decision, that’s it. My job is to get it done. You don’t go through all this endless bureaucracy and delays. The National Economic Council is kind of an information broker, and I’m looking forward to that role.”
