Hassett says authors of New York Fed tariff study should be disciplined: ‘Worst paper I’ve ever seen’

CNBC ^ | 02/18/26 | Jeff Cox

[Fury]

White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett said Wednesday that the authors of a recent New York Federal Reserve paper that found U.S. companies and consumers are shouldering most of the tariff burden should be “disciplined.”

In a CNBC interview, the National Economic Council director ripped the report, saying that central bank researchers ignored key aspects of how the duties worked and instead simply focused on prices. Hassett said the research also should have included the upward impact on wages and benefits that U.S. companies see by bringing more production onshore.

[Skwor]

I am sure the propoganda .. err paper was written exactly for its intended purpose and written very well for it.

[newnhdad]

The authors probably graduated from the same “college” as AOC.. Math is hard.

[MMusson]

It is so easy to slant papers like this just by making assumptions. If there is a political agenda, these papers are less than worthless.

[thegagline]

In the short term, tariffs adversely affect importers, exporters, producers, and consumers.

[drellberg]

It is not and never was a “study” or even a “paper.” It is a blog post that the Wall St Journal and other news franchises want to inflate. And Hassett is correct in saying that it is worthless.

[nathanbedford]

The headline frames the story as one of disciplining a wayward Fed official. But the real issue is the status of the Fed itself, whether it should be subject to discipline or, whether it ought to be subject to any external control at all?

The problem is the Fed exists because we don't trust our elected officials to do the job the Fed is entrusted with. We believe that elected officials will politicize the Fed and damage the nation. We fear that they will manipulate interest rates and inflate the money supply not for the health of the economy but only to get themselves reelected.

So we set up this quasi-constitutional rump agency, deliberately removed from our democratic process because we don't trust the representatives of that democracy. Our base case creating legitimacy of government is consciously set aside for the Fed.

Now it is clear that the comments in this forum will be decidedly in favor of granting President Trump the power to influence the Fed. But in three years the presidency of Donald Trump will move into history when we might well be faced with a Democrat President who will be very much aligned with the Fed official who wrote this report.

The Fed is a bad solution to a multi-faceted conundrum. It is not clear that more democracy will get us a better result.

[trebb]

Yep - my daughter-in-law works in the import/export business in Charleston, S.C. - she has a much better grasp than the authors...

[Fury]

I looked and the authors of the blog post did not report it as a study, at least on first reading.

Looks like media outlets trying to make a point are using the word “study”.

[Fury]

Blog post here:

https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/02/who-is-paying-for-the-2025-u-s-tariffs/

[bobbo666]

....”written”... Uhh, no. Replace with “compensated”.

[spintreebob]

I have yet to see a well written paper/article on Tariffs.
On Tariffs everything is cheerleaders for one side or the other. Everything is cherry picking anecdotes for one side or the other.

Obviously there are costs and benefits to any tariff. Obviously there are secondary and tiertiary impacts.
What is needed is an article that rationally discussses all and shows their relative importance.

[Antoninus]

Prior to beginning, the people who wrote the paper were convinced that tariffs cause economic harm, and by golly, that’s exactly what they found. Shocking.

[SunkenCiv]

• US trade deficit widens sharply in December; goods trade gap highest on record in 2025 [02/19/2026]
  • America Imported a Record Amount Last Year Despite Seismic Trade Policy Changes [02/19/2026]
• Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Ensures an Adequate Supply of Elemental Phosphorus and Glyphosate-Based Herbicides for National Security [02/19/2026]
  • Geological survey in Texas uncovers 1.6 billion barrels of oil [02/19/2026]
• California cries 'political hit job' as Trump team targets billions in unemployment fraud [02/19/2026]
  • Feds launch probe into California's 'blind eye' on unemployment fraud [02/19/2026]
• New careers, relocations and medical problems: How ex-federal workers' lives have been upended since DOGE [02/19/2026]