Hassett Offers More Evidence Why the Trump Administration Cannot Be Trusted

There are many reasons why Americans should take any statement, quote, statistic, report, or other information from this administration with a grain of salt. The most obvious reason is that, from Donald Trump on down, it is full of liars.

Whether it’s the president making stuff up on a daily basis, the Department of Homeland Security constantly lying about attacks on ICE agents that turn out to be the opposite, or Pam Bondi perjuring herself, spreading falsehood and not the truth seems to be the default mode of this administration.

Another reason is that its upper echelon consists entirely of people who tell Trump what he wants to hear and not what he needs to know.

On Wednesday, Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, reminded us of a third: In this administration, your higher-ups will make sure you face consequences if you put out information the White House doesn’t like.

Hassett was asked about a study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which found that American companies and consumers are paying for 90 percent of Trump’s tariffs.

Predictably, as a member of the “Attack, attack, and never back down” administration, he went after its authors.

“The paper is an embarrassment. It’s, I think, the worst paper I’ve ever seen in the history of the Fed system,” Hassett said. “The people associated with this paper should presumably be disciplined.”

Now, what do you think is going to happen if people putting together government reports have to fear that they will be punished for writing things that contradict the president? You know, like the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who was fired after a dismal unemployment report.

That’s right. In this economy, they are going to play it safe, and maybe fudge their findings a bit to hang on to their jobs. And that’s no way to run a government.

It should be noted that, in this case, Hassett may be partially right in that the share of the tariff burden borne by US consumers and businesses is not 90 percent.

According to a couple of non-government studies, it is even higher.

One calculated that it would be 96 percent, and the other suggested that “almost 100 percent” of the tariffs are passed through to the US.

Of course, it’s not just government workers who have to be worried about Trump’s wrath if they deliver unwelcome news.

Last year, in a social media post in which Trump falsely claimed that foreign companies and governments are on the hook for his tariffs, the president suggested to Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon that he should “get himself a new economist” after the bank warned that most of their costs would be passed through to Americans.