NEC Director Kevin Hassett Informs a Stunned Margaret Brennan that “Chickens Don’t Fly”
I enjoy Kevin ‘Sid‘ Hassett very much. He was awesome in Trump’s first term as an economic advisor, and he’s even better in term two as the Director of the National Economic Council (NEC).
When the people who controlled Joe Biden lost the 2024 election, they were angry. They wanted to leave President Trump with as big a mess as possible and all actions were taken to create chaos that Trump would have to deal with. Intellectually honest people noticed.
Part of their chaos operation was to drive up the cost of food, intentionally create inflation that Trump would have to handle. The “bird flu” issue was part of the plan. After the 2020 election the U.S. Dept of Agriculture ordered millions of chickens to be killed. Simple quarantine process was dismissed in favor of a ridiculous slaughter.
During a CBS interview today, Margaret Brennan asked Kevin Hassett what the Trump administration was going to do about food inflation, and specifically the astronomical cost of eggs. Hassett outlined the plan by first reminding Brennan that regarding spread, chickens don’t fly; ducks and geese do. I almost spit out my coffee. I enjoy Kevin Hassett. Video and Transcript Below:
[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: We want to turn now to the economy and inflation, which, compared to last January, ticked up about 3% last week. Kevin Hassett is the director of the National Economic Council, and he joins us now. Good morning to you, Director.
KEVIN HASSETT, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL: Good morning, Margaret, good morning.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, I don’t have to tell you, but the rest of the country saw their egg prices at the grocery store go up. We’re now at a record high due to that bird flu outbreak, but also labor costs, and that’s contributing to food costs overall. When will the administration get that outbreak under control?
HASSETT: Right, well, what’s going on, right, as you know, is that there is an inflation problem that’s very large. We saw the consumer price index come out, and we found out that the stagflation that was created by the policies of President Biden was way worse than we thought. Over the last three months, across all goods, including eggs, the average inflation rate was 4.6%, way above target, and an acceleration at the end of the Biden term. And, you know, this is really not just us. You could go look at Jason Furman, Larry Summers, economic advisers of President Biden kept saying, don’t do this. You’re going to cause massive inflation. In fact, Jason Furman has a very thought provoking peace in “Foreign Affairs” right now, calling the Biden economic record a tragedy. And this is them, not us, right? It’s- so, now we’ve got a lot of things that we’re doing to get ahold of it–
MARGARET BRENNAN: You’re talking about fiscal spending there.
HASSETT: Excuse me? Yeah, that’s right.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You were talking about fiscal spending there. But–
HASSETT: Well, where does inflation come from, right? And so what we’re doing now is, we’ve- we’ve got, really, a multi- multi-faceted plan to end inflation, and I’ll go quickly, because I want to end with what we’re doing with egg prices, but we’re going to have a macroeconomic change that has supply side tax cuts so we have more supply, and we’re going to reduce government spending, both through what DOGE is doing, and through congressional action. And so therefore, the macroeconomic forces that Jason Furman said were a tragedy are going to be reversed. That’s a good thing. Then we’re also going to have a lot of energy production, a lot of deregulation. And then finally, when needed, we’re going to focus on the individual thing-by-thing pieces. And so, for example, you mentioned avian flu. President Biden didn’t really have a plan for avian flu. Well, Brooke Rollins and I have been working with all the best people in government, including academics around the country and around the world, to have a plan ready for the president next week on what we’re going to do with avian flu. In fact, I was editing the thing with them tomorrow, but- but the final thing- and then I’ll give it back to you, I promise not to filibuster- that, the question is like, why did we do this? Why did we do this? That’s what everybody’s talking about. But the thing that I always start with when I’m looking at what we’re doing, what the President wants us to do, is, why did they do that? Why did they do that? And- and there are too many times where it feels like nobody thought about that in the press, or maybe–
MARGARET BRENNAN: Oh, gosh–
HASSET: –the left wing “Economist,” why did they do that? Why did Biden print so much money and cause so much inflation? Why did he do it?
MARGARET BRENNAN: Oh, Kevin–
HASSETT: That’s- that’s what I’m thinking about.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Kevin, you know, we talked about that on “Face the Nation” quite a lot. Quite a lot.
HASSETT: I don’t mean to criticize you. Okay, good for you.
MARGARET BRENNAN: No, no, no. So next week, we’ll see the plan on how to get avian flu- how to get bird flu, under–
HASSETT: I could talk about it right now if you’d like to, yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: –well, sure, what- what is the plan you’re going to- what are you going to do?
HASSETT: Yeah, so- so again, the- the Biden plan was to just, you know, kill chickens, and they spent billions of dollars just randomly killing chickens within a perimeter where they found a sick chicken. And so you go- I just went to the grocery store. I shop for our family, in part because I love to look at prices. And there were no eggs at the store yesterday, just a few. And- and so that happened because they killed all the chickens. And so what we need to do is have better ways, with biosecurity and medication and so on, to make sure that the perimeter doesn’t have to kill the chickens. Have a better, smarter perimeter. And so having a smart perimeter is what we’re working on, and we’re finalizing the ideas about how to do that with the best scientists in government. And that’s the kind of thing that should have happened a year ago, and if it had, then egg prices would be, you know, a lot better than they are now. But the avian flu is a real thing–
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
HASSETT: –and by the way, it’s spread mostly by ducks and geese. And so- think about it, they’re killing chickens to stop the spread, but chickens don’t really fly. The- the spread is happening from the geese and the ducks. And so, why does it make any sense to have a big perimeter of dead chickens, when it’s the- the ducks and the geese that are spreading it?
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, the Department of Agriculture policy has been to kill those chickens, as you know, but we’ll watch the details of that.😂 But let’s get back to something the president said. Higher interest rates, as you know, are part of that battle against inflation that the Federal Reserve has been waging, but this past week, the President called for interest rates to be lowered. Why does he think that’s going to lower your grocery prices?
KEVIN HASSETT: Well, first of all, I- I want to say that- I, just this weekend, have arranged to begin, once again, regular lunches with Jay Powell at the Federal Reserve. And Jay and I have a long and collegial relationship, and I’m going to go over there with him and the other governors. So we’re going to talk about our views about what’s going on, and listen to his and that collegiality has been going on for four years when I was here before, and the President very much values that. I think that the- the thing about–
MARGARET BRENNAN: But that’s not to influence–
HASSETT: –lower interest rates, no, I’m going to talk about- well, Jay is going to- Jay is an independent person. The Fed- independence is respected. And- and the point is, the President’s opinion is also- can be heard. He’s the president of the United States. But here’s the thing that I think is interesting, that if we get inflation under control, then that takes the pressure off the Fed. And one way to tell whether markets think, are we getting inflation under control, is to look at longer term interest rates that the Fed doesn’t affect directly. And if you look at it, the 10 year treasury rate has dropped about 40 basis points over the last couple of weeks while we announced our plan to control inflation. That saved the American people about $40 billion, about $40 billion, just from talking about the stuff that we’re about to do.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay.
HASSETT: It’s pretty good.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right. But the President’s statement contradicts economic policy, as you know–
KEVIN HASSETT: No, inflation- no, inflation rates are already- I’m saying the interest rates are already lower by 40 basis points. So, in- interest rates are lower. The one that matters–
MARGARET BRENNAN: You’re briefing the president on it. Okay–
HASSETT: –the most for the economy is maybe the 5 or 10, year rate. Those the ones that matter the most. So those are down already. So the President’s right about that.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Before we run out of time, I really want to make sure I get to you on tariffs–
HASSETT: Okay, sure.
MARGARET BRENNAN: –because there’s concern that that will add to prices, because they’ll be added on to consumers and what they pay. How are these reciprocal tariffs going to work? The President was tweeting he wants to put them on, like 175 different countries that have a VAT tax, a value added tax.
KEVIN HASSETT: You know, we’re talking to leaders of other countries all the time. Last night into the wee hours of their morning and kind of a late night for me, I was talking to Minister Reynolds from the UK about this very matter. But here’s the way I’d like to think about it, that right now, U.S. companies are spending, are paying, foreign governments about $370 billion a year in tax, and foreign comp- companies are paying the U.S. government about $57 billion in tax, and a lot of it is because of the VAT. But if we didn’t have to pay the foreign government’s tax, over 10 years, it’d be about $5 trillion of tax that U.S. citizens don’t have to pay. That would more than pay for the tax cuts that we’re debating right now. And so if we get some of that money back, either through tariffs, or for, obviously, if they reduce the tariffs of that, that that’s good for Americans, it’s going to put more money in their pockets, and- and that’s what President Trump is trying to do.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Kevin Hassett, I’d like to have you come back, sit at the table and talk through this in- in more detail at another time. We have to leave it there for today.
HASSETT: Thanks. Happy, happy to be here.
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