Press Briefing by Press Secretary Sarah Sanders and CEA Chairman Kevin Hassett | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Q - just playing off of this question here.

    CHAIRMAN HASSETT: But yeah, go separately, because I'll forget the first one when you finish the second.

    Q Exactly. Thank you. You're coming out, obviously, talking about the economic numbers in our first briefing here in nearly three weeks. It seems like it might be timed to President Obama's speeches on Friday and Saturday, in which he talked about the economy and some of these very issues. Is that why you're here today? Or is that just a coincidence?

    CHAIRMAN HASSETT: That - you know, thank you for asking that, actually. Because Sarah can tell you that I've been pushing her to let me show these slides for quite a while, that we've updated them for recent data, but that, in fact - I don't know about the three-week lag; I think it has something to do with the fact that sensible people sometimes, even in the White House, take a break in August, and there was some vacation taking at the time.

    But yeah, that - we were prepared to do this briefing a few weeks ago. And there's not in any way a timing that's related to President Obama's Friday remarks.

    And then I promised you number two.

    Q Thank you very much. You talked about, obviously -

    CHAIRMAN HASSETT: But the next person is going to ask for three, you realize, and so I shouldn't have done that. (Laughs.)

    Q (Inaudible) - under President Trump, the President also - and I'm curious about your views and comments on this - has told private companies - Apple, Amazon, the NFL - how to run their business. Do you believe that's appropriate for a President to do? Do you believe that stimulates economic growth for a President to be dictating how private companies run their stuff?

    CHAIRMAN HASSETT: Well, the President has strong opinions about everything. I think that we wouldn't have had all the policy success that we've had if he hadn't been such a strong advocate for the things that we've seen. I think that his strong opinions sometimes stretch into areas that are outside of the places that CEA has any purview. And I don't counsel him on that.

    I think, at a previous presser, I once said that I don't run the "Council of Twitter Advisors," and may that be true for all of my stay here.

    I'll go back to the blue shirt in the back. Yeah. And I skipped a row. Sorry, I'll come forward.

    Q A quick question for you on an economic stat that the President put out in a comment today. The President said, "The GDP Rate...is higher than the Unemployment Rate...for the first time in over 100 years!" That's just not true, though, is it?

    CHAIRMAN HASSETT: Yeah, that's - so I could tell you what is true. (Laughter.) And the history of thought - no, but, though, let me just say that the history of thought of how errors happen is not something that I can engage in. Because, like, from the initial fact to what the President said, I don't know the whole chain of command. But what is true is that it's the highest in 10 years. And at some point, somebody probably conveyed it to him, adding a zero to that, and they shouldn't have done that.

    And I could say that we numbers geeks here at the White House are grateful for - when the press finds mistakes that we make. We don't like making mistakes, but we're grateful when they're pointed out because we want to correct them.

    And you might have noticed that I gave Sarah a bad number a few weeks ago. It was 100 percent my fault, and I apologized immediately. And we created it. And, you know, you'd have to talk to the President about where the number came from, but the correct number is 10 years.

    And then I said I would come forward.

    Q He said President Obama - former President Obama - said "President Trump would need a magic wand to get to 4 percent GDP." The President suggested that was a direct quote from President Obama. Did President Obama ever say that?

    CHAIRMAN HASSETT: I don't know. I'm sorry. And again, I'm not the chairman of the "Council of Twitter Advisors." But I was trying to go back up. Yeah.

    Q On wage growth, the White House put out a number that uses a different way of calculating wage growth. It seems like that's unfortunate, because you get an apples and oranges comparison to previous wage-growth calculations. Why is it important to do that? The new calculation incorporated things that are non-cash benefits, like vacation time and other types of benefits. Why do that mid-stream and not just base your analysis on wage growth based on the way that it's been calculated in the past?

    CHAIRMAN HASSETT: Yeah. Well, thanks for the question. We have a whole report that came out last week, and there were a lot of new stories that I thought were very well done and thoughtful about the piece. And I think that the question for Americans - what they really want to know is: How are President Trump's policies affecting their lives? And it turns out that the statistic that got the most attention in the media is not a very reasonable statistic for answering that question.

    Now, we talked about how to better measure that. And it was not a criticism of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We love those people; we're data geeks. We use their data to come up with a better measure. But a better measure will account for the fact that people get benefits. A better measure would account for the fact that people just had tax cuts. A better measure will account for the fact that the composition of the labor force is changing because so many people are coming in. And the people who have been out for a while tend to be lower skilled, and so they can bring averages down if you don't control for that.

    And so, in our study, we controlled for all of that and showed that just as is consistent with our 4.2 GDP growth, we're seeing a massive amount of wage growth right now compared to what projections were when President Trump took office.

    And I don't see Sarah telling me I have to stop. So should I keep going?

    MS. SANDERS: (Inaudible.)

    CHAIRMAN HASSETT: (Laughs.) Okay. Oh, yeah, I'll go back there and then - I've been right-handed and that's really terrible. I apologize.

    Sir, yeah.

    Q To keep these trends going, how important is it for you to have a new North American Free Trade Agreement including Canada?

    CHAIRMAN HASSETT: Yeah. Thank you for the question. And the first thing, before I turn to the trade part of the question, is that some people have also said, "Well, sure, the economy is strong, but that's a sugar high." But it's not a sugar high at all. Because what's happened is that the capital spending boom that we promised would happen if we passed the tax cuts is underway. And the cool thing about capital spending is that people build factories - that's what capital spending is - and they do that in the first half of the year. It's up 10 percent since the beginning of the year. And then in the second half of the year, those factories start producing output, so you get more output.

    And so the idea that the trend might not continue - that it's a sugar high - is just inconsistent with the form that the growth is taking. And as for NAFTA, Ambassador Lighthizer and the whole team have been in negotiations with Canada. We continue to be hopeful that they'll sign on to the 21st century deal with Mexico, which is really a better deal for American workers. And they should sign on to that.

    So I'll come over here and I'll go back to you.

    Q Hi, Yamiche with PBS NewsHour. I have a question about income inequality. Can you talk a little bit about whether or not you've seen income inequalities shrink? And are you at all concerned about whether or not people that are just poor - not just people that are in the economy, but actual poor people that are living beyond the poverty line - below the poverty line - are they being improved by this economy?

    CHAIRMAN HASSETT: Yeah, they certainly are. Certainly think about it. All the new entrants that get a job - they go from having zero wage to having a wage, but they won't necessarily show up in the wage statistics - those people are better off.

    And there are a number of other ways that people are better off, too, because of the growth in the economy, but also because of policies that have given resources to families that are needy. At the CEA, we put out a different report over the summer on what's going on with poverty - correctly measured. And then, in the "stay tuned" department, there is important data coming out this week which will help us look at how income inequality has changed over - not in this year, but over the previous year.

    My expectation is that that data will start to turn, and that this year we're going to see a decline in income inequality because blue-collar wages are starting to grow.

    And it's a final point - and it's a really important point that you bring up, and I want to emphasize it because I care so much about it. The fact is that we're at a historic moment because we're deep into a recovery, the unemployment rate is really low, and we've created a capital spending boom. And so normally what happens, if you don't have a capital spending boom, is that people start to bid up the wages for folks, but they're bidding them up because there's a shortage of labor. What's happening now is that they're bidding up wages because people have better machines to work with and their productivity is going up. That means that the recovery can last longer. And that's really, really good for workers, especially at the low end.

    And so it's precisely at this moment in economic history - if you look at past economic booms where income inequality has declined - that if we were to blow it, and have a recession because of bad policy right now, then we'd lose an enormous opportunity on income inequality.

    I'll come right here.

    Q Thank you. Also, two, not three.

    CHAIRMAN HASSETT: And I guess it's the last question.

    Q Sorry, two quick ones. Sorry.

    CHAIRMAN HASSETT: Is he allowed two? Can you tell - do you like this guy? (Laughter.)

    MS. SANDERS: That will get me into trouble.

    CHAIRMAN HASSETT: (Laughs.) Okay.

    Q You said, 'I prefer you blame or credit to policies rather than individuals,' but your trend charts start with his election, obviously, when he wasn't even President when he didn't bring his policies into place. So how does that - how do you decide when to start that, given that policies couldn't have been in place for months afterwards?

    CHAIRMAN HASSETT: Yeah. So Robert Lucas - a famous Chicagoan who won the Nobel Prize at the University of Chicago - got the Nobel Prize for answering your question back in the early '70s. But the basic point is that America's businesses, especially, that their activity is forward looking. And so if you want to model their investment today, then you have to understand the fact that they're forming expectations not just about this month, but about the next 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years.

    And so if you look at what happened the moment President Trump was elected - both in equity markets and in sentiment surveys - is that people started to ratchet up their expectations for what would happen to the economy. Perhaps, you know, everybody, except for Mrs. Clinton's supporters, was starting to do that right after the election. And the fact is that those expectations turned out to be rational because the turnaround that they expected is something that we see, as you just saw in the data.

    Let me hand it back to Sarah now, but close by saying that anyone who wants to follow up and talk about the data - you can tell I kind of like to do that - so feel free to reach out through the press office and connect with me over at the CEA. Thank you so much.

    MS. SANDERS: Thanks so much, Kevin. Thank you, Kevin.

    A couple of announcements and updates, and then I'll take your questions.

    Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee under Chairman Grassley conducted a thorough and transparent week of hearings allowing each senator ample time to thoroughly review the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

    Unfortunately, many committee Democrats and protestors attempted to turn the hearing into a circus. Nonetheless, Judge Kavanaugh demonstrated exactly why President Trump nominated him. He showed his respect for the Constitution, impeccable qualifications, and extraordinary temperament. Judge Kavanaugh reinforced the bedrock principles of judicial independence and the rule of law. And we look forward to the judiciary committee completing its review and advancing his nomination.

    On another matter - later today, by phone, and also tomorrow in person at the White House, President Trump is scheduled to receive a briefing from DHS Secretary Nielsen and FEMA Administrator Long. The latest briefing is part of the President's monitoring of multiple storms that are predicted to affect the U.S. in the coming days.

    The White House has been in contact with governors' offices and local authorities in Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Hawaii, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, just since Saturday morning.

    Lines of communication remain open, and the federal government stands ready to assist. These tropical storms and hurricanes are very dangerous, and we encourage anyone in the path to heed the warnings of state and local officials who have the expertise and knowledge of their communities to provide the best on-ground information.

    Lastly, we extend our deepest condolences to the family of Secret Service Agent Colin Johnson. Agent Johnson has served his country honorably, first as a Marine and then in the Secret Service.

    Many of you know him. He was larger than life, literally - was a great friend, father, husband, and member of the United States Secret Service.

    The men and women in the Secret Service are among the most honorable and dedicated public servants you can find anywhere in the world, and Colin was among the very best of them.

    And although he was assigned to Chief of Staff John Kelly, he was always there to help anyone who needed it.

    Our hearts are broken, and Agent Johnson will be greatly missed. Our prayers are with his entire family.

    And with that, I'll take your questions. John.

    Q If I could start off, sort of, with the topic of the day, and that's the anonymous op-ed in the New York Times. What the President said on Friday - that he thought it would be a good idea for Jeff Sessions to look into this - is there anything about what was published by the New York Times that would warrant an investigation by the Department of Justice?

    MS. SANDERS: Certainly if there's an individual - whether or not, since we don't know who they are - if that individual is in meetings where national security is being discussed or other important topics, and they are attempting to undermine the executive branch, that would certainly be problematic and something that the Department of Justice should look into.

    Q So would that be a suggestion of misuse of classified information? I mean, what realm would that fall into?

    MS. SANDERS: Once again, it's something that the Department of Justice should simply look into. And that's for them to make that determination.

    Q Can I just add one quick follow-up on that, if I could? Is the White House actively trying to find out who this person is? Or do you not really care and you're moving on to other things?

    MS. SANDERS: We're certainly focused on things that actually matter. And the staff here that - is here to do their job and not undermine the great work that this President and this administration has done. And we're going to continue focusing on that.