Eastern on cspans q and a. White House National economic counselor, larry kudlow, talk to the Washington Post yesterday about the outlook for the u. S. Economy and was asked about the status of Coronavirus Relief negotiations. Robert good to have you here. Thank you for coming. The u. S. Economy grow at a record 7. 4 percent between july and september. It has recovered two thirds of the ground it lost during the first half of the year during the pandemic, but many economists remain wary because the figure comes as the country is still entering this time of rising coronavirus cases and the economy has not entirely healed. So lets begin with these new numbers. Do you acknowledge these record gains follow record losses . Larry of course i do. The shutmic because of ins last spring generated a very heavy economic toll. Very heavy. You have a 33 increase, annualized increase in the third quarter. Thats a record. I want to go underneath the hood here because i think this is a selfsustaining recovery. The numbers are gargantuan. Consumer spending up 41 , housing up 59 , Business Investment in equipment up 70 up automobile production almost 1200 . This isthis selfsustaining. It is going to spill over into the Current Quarter and next year, policies permitting. The one missing link and a lot of people have not talked about this, you are going to get a big inventory rebuild. I dont mean to go into the grass and weeds on business and economics, but that is the way the economy works. You have rising demands liberated by the reopening of the economy and now inventories have to be rebuilt to meet those to meet those demand. That means you are going to have several quarters, maybe a good year of more production, more manufacturing, more jobs, more wage increases. Thats the way its going to work. Talk about your positive outlook and say this is selfsustaining. But i have to contrast your comments with what dr. Fauci said on cnbc on wednesday night. He said its going to get worse, in terms of the pandemic, we are going into a colder season, weve got to do something different. We cant just let this happen. He has a pretty bleak view about how this will unfold with the pandemic and the pandemic is connected to the economy, is it not . Larry yes, of course. But i would also say that dr. Virus taskr last force meeting this is thursday, i think it was monday or tuesday, he said we mustnt and wont advocate shutting down the economy. Thats a big difference from what happened last winter. Are all agreed that another shut down would terry cost and consequences way beyond the problem. We dont want the cure to be worse than the problem. That has been the president s position, but the experts are saying the same thing. Instead, let me offer a better alternative. Im not denying the viruses popping up, particularly in the Northern Midwest for planes theresnd i dont deny a lot of hardship from it. But having said that, we know how to protect the vulnerable. Weve got more equipment and testing than ever before. We are doing a million tests a day right now. Online,therapies coming and the principal mitigation efforts remain the same. Distancing,king, good old fashion hygiene, washing your hands. And i would add to this that ambassador and others in this meeting discussed not so much big crowds, but people coming home for the holidays or whatnot. Im not saying they all have to wear masks all the time, but the distancing issue is probably important and people have to be on guard for that. Thought i this dont see another shut down. That is not a mitigation technique we favor. We cannot dictate to every state. They have ultimate authority, but that is our view. I know whats going on in europe and im not going to tell them how to live either but i just dont think another shut down works. That means the outlook for the economy is going to be better because we have proven these kinds of mitigation guidelines, when followed, do contain the virus. Thats an important point. I do not think that a leads to be in that logic. Thats all im trying to get across. I dont think youre going to have a shut down and i do think this is going to continue to recover and so will wages. Robert if you are not going to have a shut down in the coming weeks or months, does that mean your view is this administration has the virus under control . Term i dont like the under control i dont know what that means. Contained is a word i do like. You go from mitigation to containment and thats our strategy. Is goingy, the vaccine to be so important and probably thats the ultimate fix. The virus task force meeting, mr. Pyeongchang and others suggested late december, early in the new year for the vaccine. No one knows. Im not the scientist. Im just telling you what our Health Experts are saying. In the meantime, in addition to the mitigation, i think the new therapies coming online, regeneron and so forth, are very important and will be used more wisely and i want to add to that insofar as the vaccine is concerned, what it is approved by the outside independent counseling and reviewers, we have already put together a military and fema plan to largebute vaccines in sevenfigure numbers across the country and i might add it will be done for free. Insurance,covered by anyone with prior conditions and so forth, we will just give it to you for free. Weve got the distribution and we are waiting for the goahead. Economy andto the todays gdp and my suggestion we can get a selfsustaining recovery, we are not going to shut down. But i will tell you what else we are not going to raise taxes, we are not going to reregulate, and we are not going to add oil, gas and power. Hadrt the stock market has a rough stretch. It has slid in recent days. Is President Trump concerned about that and are there any plans policy wise to address the stock market in the coming days or weeks . Bob. not specifically, i spoke to the president last evening about the economic releases. We know the market is correcting. We know the market is fearful about the spread of the pandemic in europe once again. That, and corrections are probably appropriate. Im not going to secondguess the market. The policiesis that generated tremendous prosperity prepandemic, i. E. Lower tax rates, rollback of unnecessary regulations, and sector,ent energy including renewals and better trade policies, that stuff which gave us a 3. 5 Unemployment Rate and the highest Living Standards in 20 years, gave the biggest benefits to middle and lower income classes and minority groups, and those are facts, those are facts from Census Bureau and the bls, those policies need to be continued. He iss his intent, if reelected, to continue those policies and build on them. We are formulating right now a middleclass tax cut, we are formulating on ensuring tax incentives to bring companies and supply chains back home to the usa. We are looking at additional u. S. Trade deals that will have incentives for a strong economic recovery. I say dont change horses in midstream. Stay with the guys and policies that brought you to this prosperity dance and the other team disagrees. I understand that. Were going to have an election on tuesday and at some future point we will know the outcome. We are not aiming at stocks in particularly, but in general, after this big jump in gdp, we should be growing at 5 or 6 next year and then 3 plus in the following years. Thats the normal prosperity cycle. We did it once, we can do it again. Robert you say the stock market is in a correction. How does that play out the rest of this fall . Arry you are asking for kudlow investment strategy. Are you sure you want to hear that . [laughter] robert you are the president s top economic adviser. How far is it going to correct . Know, nobody ever notice and im not going to hazard a guess. I do think as the economy recovers under this scenario, and i know it is an optimistic scenario and i am an optimist, but the facts bared out. The stock market will take care of itself. I believe in buying stocks for the long run and i dont believe in shortterm trading. The 100 million plus investors around the country with their 401 k s and their iras and so forth agree with me. Stocks for the long run. Backconomy cannot only get to normal, it can surpass normalcy. We were in a great cycle preprint prepandemic and i believe it can be rebuilt. Robert what is the plan for the millions of americans who have not recovered their jobs under not feeling the celebration today . Larry thats important. About half the workforce that has been unemployed has gone back to work but that still leaves half. Its not good enough by a longshot. Theyre still too much hardship. By the way, thats one of the reasons we wanted a narrower, targeted assistance package. That give you two items were always top of our list. Unemploymentas assistance because having not gotten the deal this summer and trumpr so far, president took the lead, generated an executive order to provide a 300 federal plus up but that is going to run out. We need a congressional appropriation to ensure those people will remain covered by a federal program during this difficult time. The second point we wanted was to aid Small Businesses. Protectionyroll plan, which probably saved 50 million jobs and you can see in the numbers come weve had a good increase in jobs. Employmentcivilian temporary layoffs come about half of them have gone back to work. Had 135 billion unspent. Unspent. The congressional appropriations to reappropriate those moneys into a new cycle i never understood that. We can debate the ideological and political differences. We have an election for that. It in terms of economic assistance to help the very group you just mentioned, the unemployed, which i agree is way too high and we must deal with that, while the economy is recovering, we need to help them and we need to have a deal. We should have had standalone bills or something. We should have had a deal to help them and the small de Small Businesses that are most vulnerable and i think its a mystery why we could not have reached a compromise agreement. Secretary mnuchin calls me up at 7 30 this morning. Speaker pelosi sends a letter he talks to her every day for the last three or four months and this letter is mysteriously published in politico before the secretary himself even gets a copy. Robert why doesnt President Trump call up Speaker Pelosi . Why doesnt President Trump just pick up the phone and call himself . Mnuchinecause secretary is a terrific negotiator and that process was working, but unfortunately, it did not reach the outcome. All the issues on the table, but it became all or nothing. With the business about the letter and so forth, the secretary so frustrated on the phone, we just think she is stringing us along. Im sorry to say that, its not personal, but i dont think she wants a deal or compromise preelection. Robert thats why i asked you about having the president call you say you respected the process but youve been griping about the letter from Speaker Pelosi in previous interviews today. Clearly, the process has broken down. Whos going to put it back together . We are going to have an election in a couple of days. I really believe of all the issues out there, the Small Business assistance, and let reopenings chemical but assistance, machineries, so forth. Those are the most important. Maybe airlines. Those of a key areas we should have done this last summer. Those are the key areas we should have done this last summer. Rry, his leader mcconnell on the same page as you and President Trump . Is he going to speak and handcuff you during the lameduck on any stimulus deal . The mcconnell, mitch mcconnell, ive known for a long time. Hes very wise. He told us during this process that if there was a genuine hisrtisan bill, and many of asks are part of that bill, that he would before it. Be for it. But we didnt get those asks. It of them and one of them is the issue of Small Business liability insurance. It will help reopen the sector and rehire the workers. Why didnt we do that . Gross negligence is one thing. Caught upwant to get and trial lawyers and lawsuits and so forth. This would help the economy tremendously. The republicans did not want to spend a lot of money that was badlyssary to bailout managed states and localities. President trump agreed with that point of view. That could be done later. Theidnt have to have package here. Said my piece. I believe ive reflected the secretarys views and the president s views. We will hopefully go to work right after the election. Unemployment is an issue. We come back 50 , and the rest of the economy has come back, frankly, over 90 , from the pandemic lows. But we have to protect and help the unemployed while the economy reactivates them back to work. Lets get it done and help Small Businesses. Robert i keep hearing from the administration of blue state bailouts. What about subsidies for farmers . Do you support the . That . Why are they getting those federal subsidies so many subsidies . Larry believe it or not, farm than subsidies, has risen substantially under President Trump. Some added help from us, because the china trade deal took a long time to pan out, there were lives disruption to the marketplace, and their exports suffered. We have the strongest, best run technologically farm sector in the world. We decided to help them along the way. Secondly, the pandemic. We have given assistance to a lot of sectors. Those are not necessarily permanent subsidies. I dont want to forecast how long these emergencies are going to last, but yes, we came to their assistance. Heres good news. With all the problems with china, there are very important problems here for which they will be held accountable. Notwithstanding, we are engaged on trade and they are buying commodities. That will help our farm sector quite a bit. The farm subsidies were justified. That is a different question than 1020 years of badly managed cities and states. Robert any tariffs coming on china for its handling of the coronavirus . Larry no, not immediately. Robert so they are on the table . Larry china will be held accountable for the lack of and the possible instigation of the spread of the virus. That is all being looked into and discussed. We are very unhappy with china, not only on the china virus issue, but also on the hong kong the priming the economy of its democratic and free rights. We oppose her human rights their human rights. The liberals are joining us on all this stuff, if you ask me. We need to be very tough on china. And their military adventurism in the south china sea. We are engaged on trade. Robert lighthizer, he and i have spoken many times in the last few weeks. He has also told the president china is keeping a steel so far on the commodity purchases. Ambassador lighthizer is optimistic that changes will be made on the issue of an electoral property theft. We will be thankful for some progress there. Robert it is clearly a ministration wants to keep it straight to with china going, but you say you want to hold them accountable. How do you hold them accountable in another way if not tariffs . Going to leave that to postelection discussions. We have a number of options. We have already taken a number of actions on things like export controls and protect consumer personal information, corporate information, government information. Regarding new measures and so forth, i dont want to get ahead of the president. All that, there are many things under discussion internally. We will see. Robert those would be economic penalties . Larry perhaps. Robert any details, larry . Larry not at the moment, bob, sorry. This is deep National Security stuff. Im not going to reveal that now. These decisions will be up to the president , of course, and the National Security council. We are working on a number of options. The china is very much on our mind. Secretary from tail on our minds. Secretary pompeo has been a great leader on this. More will be forthcoming, but not at the moment. Robert really appreciate your time this afternoon, larry kudlow. Thank you. Larry thank you, appreciated. Robert thank you all for joining us today for another Washington Post conversation. Dont miss our election daily show every day monday through friday at 1 00 p. M. Eastern now through next week, to go over the latest headlines, talk to reporters, then on newsmakers on friday, i will be joined by peter navarro, who works along larry kudlow in the white house, representative, lisa blunt rochester, at 1 00 p. M. Eastern on friday right here. At 3 00 p. M. , my colleague, robin given, will talk to will i. Am, one of the legendary musicians over the last 20 years who was very popular when i was in high school and college. He will be here talking to robin. Make sure to stop by for those conversations. For now, things for joining us thanks for joining us. We will see you soon. Watching you are cspan, youre unfiltered view of government, created by americas Television Company and brought to you today by your television provider. Coming up, live coverage of several of the Days Campaign 2020 events. At about 3 00 eastern today, we will take you to arizona to hear from mike pence at a Campaign Rally taking place. Then joe biden campaigns at a driven rally in st. Paul , minnesota. Senator, lindsey graham, and his democratic opponent, jamie harrison, are holding a debate this evening. We will have that for you live starting at 7 00 eastern. Campaigns inrris houston tonight, starting at 835 p. M. Eastern. Watch it here on cspan. Also, live coverage online at cspan. Org or listen with the free cspan radio app. Announcer with 4 days left , stay withion day cspan. Everyday onoverage , on cspan. Org, or listen on the free cspan radio app. Your place for an unfiltered view of politics. Next, eric holder, the former attorney general under president obama, and Newt Gingrich join the Washington Post to talk about election day. He discusses the trump administration, voter turnout, and voter suppression. This is 40 minutes. Robert good afternoon. Im bob costa, reporter from the Washington Post. Welcome back to the post lives election daily show. Daily show. We launched this show yesterday so you could have uptotheminute election news every day at 1 p. M. Eastern. Today, i will be joined by former house speaker, Newt Gingrich, who is a strong supporter of President Trump. In just a minute, i will be joined by former attorney general eric