Transcript: Gary Cohn on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," Feb. 1, 2026
The following is the transcript of the interview with Gary Cohn, IBM vice chairman and former director of the U.S. National Economic Council, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on Feb. 1, 2026.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Welcome back to Face the Nation. For an update now on the economy, we're joined by Gary Cohn, who was the top economic advisor to President Trump during his first term in office. He is now the vice chairman of IBM. Good to have you back here.
GARY COHN, IBM VICE CHAIRMAN: Thanks for having me.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So the president has this editorial in The Wall Street Journal arguing all the economic success that we are seeing right now is due to his tariff policies. The legality of that, of some of those tariffs are being debated right now before the Supreme Court. How factual do you assess his argument to be?
COHN: Well, I think we need to take a step back. The economy is quite strong right now on top-line growth. So if you look at GDP, gross domestic product, which is the overall output of the U.S. economy, we're trending about 5% right now, which is a very high growth rate in the United States, much higher than the baseline we've had for the last decade. So if you look at that number alone, and that's a good number to look at, things are going well. The inflation rate has come down to the high 2%. It's still higher than we'd like it. And the unemployment rate is ticking up, but it's still in a reasonable place around 4, 4.5%. So overall, the economy is quite strong right now. That said, we've got an interesting economy right now. We've got this massive wealth effect at the top end. And we've got hardworking Americans who are having a very difficult time paying their bills, and they're suffering in this economy. And I think the White House has acknowledged that they're suffering. I think part of the reason the president wrote the op-ed was to try and get out in front of people who are having a hard time paying their bills and meeting their expenses. The White House is going on the offensive. The president is going to spend time out on the road talking about affordability. Affordability is going to be the issue.
MARGARET BRENNAN: He says it's a hoax.
COHN: Well, I think affordability will be the issue between now and the midterm elections.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right. And we know the chief of staff has said she wants the president out there talking about the economy. But you just mentioned what consumers are feeling. The White House says people will just feel better after tax time. You wrote that original tax law that was then just renewed and extended by Congress. But you are seeing companies like Amazon announce its cutting 16,000 corporate jobs. MasterCard cutting 4% of its 35,000-person workforce. UPS, 30,000 jobs gone. Dow, 4,500. Home Depot, 800. If everything's trending in a positive direction, what is going on there?
COHN: So we did see over 60,000 additional layoffs come out of companies last week during the earnings season. It's typically when companies talk about managing expenses. Companies today have two basic things going on. Number one, companies hoarded labor during and after COVID. When we were working from home and people were remote, productivity went down and companies were worried about getting the workloads done. So most companies end up hiring additional people or not letting anyone go. So workforces ballooned. And I think we're now in the part of the cycle where corporate America is very comfortable about replacing people. They're very comfortable about hiring people. So they're downsizing their headcount from hoarding to sort of a more naturalized level. And I think a lot of those numbers that we saw this week being announced were companies rightsizing themselves. In addition to that, we have seen input costs for companies go up quite dramatically, whether it be labor cost, commodity costs or tariffs, as we agree. Someone has to pay the tariffs. So as companies are trying to balance their equation--
MARGARET BRENNAN: --The president says there's no cost to it that's going to hurt a company.
COHN: But he also says that there's $200 billion plus sitting in an account of money they've collected. So the money's being paid by someone. So the corporations are paying the money. They're trying to figure out how to deal with input costs going up, tariffs going off, cost of labor going up, and not really having the ability to raise prices to the consumer because we've seen how tough it is for a lot of Americans to afford things today. So companies are walking that fine line between absorbing input costs and not being able to raise prices.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So the White House, as you said, they are aware they have a problem, even if they don't want to explicitly say they have a problem politically because of that lower-end consumer. But when you look, one of the ideas being floated by the president is a one-year cap on credit card rates at 10% and somehow getting Congress to compel that. He signed an executive order to limit institutional investors from buying single-family homes. And then he's floated this idea of $2,000 checks, which may or may not require Congress. What do you think about these consumer-focused parts of the plan? Are they viable?
COHN: Look, I think it's admirable that they're understanding that people are cash trapped today. They're stuck with not enough disposable income. So I think the White House is throwing out ideas that will put more disposable income back in consumers' hands--
MARGARET BRENNAN: --These are not ideas you would have endorsed when you were in that advisor role--
COHN: --Unfortunately, unfortunately, those ideas probably don't solve the problem. In fact, the credit card rates probably have the opposite effect. So credit card companies charge people a risk-adjusted rate to lend them money. Obviously, worst credits, people that have the highest probability of defaulting pay the highest rates. If you put a cap on rates that can be charged, what do companies do? They actually stop lending to the riskiest part of the population. And so their consumers will lose purchasing power, not gain purchasing power. You know, on the housing side, the one thing I remind people is the institutional accumulation of housing happened after the '08 financial crisis. When we had a massive glut of houses in the United States, prices were plummeting. So the financial markets stepped in and they put a support underneath the housing market. And we can't forget how important these financial players are in times of stress.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, we should also say you worked for Goldman Sachs and were president there for a very long time, including during that financial crisis. But let's not relitigate some of that, but talk about someone you got to know during that time. That was Kevin Warsh, who was a Fed governor and is now President Trump's pick to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. He's called for all sorts of reforms of the Fed. What do you expect from him in office?
COHN: So, look, I think we're very fortunate to have Kevin to be the nominee. Kevin has a unique background coming in as the chair. As you said, he was a member of the Fed board before. He was there during the 2008 financial crisis. He was instrumental in that crisis. What I mean by that is when banks were going through stress, and we saw a lot of bank mergers, we saw a lot of assets being moved around the system, Kevin was the point person at the Fed. He was involved in every one of those discussions. And I truly believe without Kevin's expertise and without Kevin being there, we would not have come out of the 2008 crisis as well as we have. So he's very highly qualified. He's going to take the Fed back to its traditional sort of norms. You know, I think Kevin's going to stay out of a lot of the non-financial issues. He's going to be involved, obviously, in setting interest rate policy. There is a pressure right now for interest rates to go lower. I think that he will probably follow through on the one to two cuts this year. Kevin also has a view that the Fed should not have the large balance sheet. You know, the Fed went in and bought enormous amount of securities--
MARGARET BRENNAN: --Quantitative easing (inaudible)
COHN: I think that Kevin will reverse that. I think he will be looking for the Fed to sell down their balance sheet. And on the regulatory front, I think Kevin is a, is a traditionalist believing that we need strong regulation in the United States, but it has to be regulation that works and allows the market to grow and allows the consumer to have access to capital. So I think he is actually the completely right choice in this period of time. And on Friday, when his nomination came out, the markets spoke.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.
COHN: And I think you have to look at what the markets tell you because they're real-time feedback indicators.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
COHN: So we saw the dollar strengthen by about 1%. We saw silver drop by 25%. We saw gold drop by 10%--
MARGARET BRENNAN: --The president also spoke last night at a dinner and said he's going to sue Warsh if he doesn't lower interest rates. You take that as a joke?
COHN: Yes, I take it as a joke. Look, I think the president completely understands the independence of the Fed. Kevin has been a staunch advocate for independence of the Fed.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, he's got a confirmation process to go through, and we will see if Thom Tillis's request for the Department of Justice's probe into the current Fed chair stands in the way of actually getting him through. But we'll track that. Gary Cohn, always good to have you here.
COHN: Thanks for having me.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We'll be right back.
