What will the US presidential election mean for the economy?

What will the US presidential election mean for the economy? I'm Alison Nathan, and this is Goldman Sachs Exchanges. Each month, I speak with investors, policymakers, and academics about the most pressing market moving issues for our top of mind report from Goldman Sachs Research. This month, I spoke with top economists from each party to find out how the upcoming election could impact economic policy. Jared Bernstein is the current chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under president Biden, and Kevin Hassett served as the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under president Tr

if you think about the macroeconomy, I'd say, they're likely to inherit a solid expansion where inflation has come down from its peak close to target without sacrificing much at all on the economy's growth side. Unemployment's come up a bit, but it remains low. The pace of job gains just over the past 3 months, 186,000. That's at the north end of the break even level that most, labor economists subscribe to. And very importantly, from the perspective of, Biden Harris administration, we have rising real wages and incomes, and we've had those ongoing for a while now. However, we have unfinished

I asked the same question of former CEH chair Kevin Hassett. Going

into the middle of the summer, there were clearer signals in the labor market that we were entering a recession, say, around August. And that's why when the fed cut interest rates 50 basis points, it made sense to me because the SOM rule and other things were kicking off that we were in a recession. But then everything just turned on a dime. And in fact, if you look at the improvement in unemployment since then, since the peak, it's been like one of the sharper improvements in unemployment that we've seen in the history of job market data. So it's a kind of a strange time. It looks like the la

I then asked each to share their views on a range of economic policy proposals. We started with the big one, tariffs. I first turn to Kevin for his thoughts. I

think the the expansion of tariffs on China is is a very important policy. Developed economies have been shocked by the massive expansion of Chinese corporate espionage because, basically, the the amount of theft of US intellectual property and and spying that's going out of the US is really disturbing, and it's way outside of the bounds of things that any other country on Earth does. And so I think that, China should be kicked out of the WTO probably. I think that however harsh a trade policy a country wants to have towards China, I think that it's deserved.

Is it mostly about that theft, or are there other unfair trade practices?

I think that it's IP theft, and it's production of stuff that's geopolitically, strategically important. As an example, going back to the steel tariffs during the Trump administration, it's widely accepted fact the allies went world war 2 because of US productive capacity. And when you ask yourself, what was it we were producing that helped us win world war 2, then it was mostly steel. Everything had steel in it. Right? The tanks, the airplanes. And the Chinese have invested in a massive overcapacity of steel, which really puts them visibly on a war footing. And they're dumping that steel ever

What about universal tariffs on all US imports? Is that a policy that should be pursued?