Transcript: Gary Cohn on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” Feb. 1, 2026

The following is a transcript of an interview with Gary Cohn, vice chairman of IBM and former director of the US National Economic Council, which 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 President Trump’s top economic adviser 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 plan in the Wall Street Journal saying that all the economic success we’re seeing right now is because of his tax policies. The legality of that, some of those amounts are now being debated before the Supreme Court. Are you testing the validity of his argument?

COHN: Well, I think we’re going to have to go back. The economy is very strong right now on the growth front. So if you look at GDP, gross domestic product, which is the overall output of the US economy, we’re trending at about 5% right now, which is the highest growth rate in the United States, much higher than the baseline we’ve had in 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 dropped to 2%. It is still higher than we would like. And the unemployment rate is going up, but it’s still in a reasonable place at about 4, 4.5%. So, the economy is really strong right now. That said, we have an interesting economy right now. We have this great wealth effect at the end. And we have hard working Americans who are having a very difficult time paying their bills, and they are suffering in this economy. And I think the White House has acknowledged that they are suffering. I think one of the reasons the president wrote the op-ed was to try to get out in front of people who are having trouble paying their bills and making ends meet. The White House continues to attack. The president will spend time on the road talking about his inability to pay. Affordability will be a problem.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You say it’s a lie.

COHN: Well, I think affordability is going to be an issue between now and the midterm elections.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right. And we know that the chief of staff said he wants the president there to talk about the economy. But you just said how consumers feel. The White House says people will feel better after tax season. He wrote that first tax law that was then renewed and expanded by Congress. But you see companies like Amazon announcing its cut of 16,000 corporate jobs. MasterCard is cutting 4% of its 35,000 employees. UPS, 30,000 jobs gone. The Dow, 4,500. Home Depot, 800. If everything is trending positively, what happens there?

COHN: So we saw an additional 60,000 layoffs at companies last week during the payroll season. It’s often when companies talk about cost management. Companies today have two basic things going on. First, companies are hoarding workers during and after COVID. When we were working from home and people were remote, productivity was down and companies were worried about doing heavy work. So many companies end up hiring more people or not letting anyone go. So the workers have been successful. And I think we’re now part of a cycle where corporate America is very comfortable with replacing people. They are very comfortable with hiring people. So they reduce their head count from their collection to a sort of naturalized level. And I think a lot of those numbers that we saw announced this week were franchises. In addition to that, we have seen input costs in companies increase significantly, whether it is labor costs, material costs or prices, as we agree. Someone has to pay the price. So as companies try to balance their equation–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –The president says no cost will hurt the company.

COHN: But you also say there’s $200 billion and a cash account that they’ve collected. So the money is paid to the person. So companies pay money. They’re trying to figure out how to deal with rising input costs, rising prices, rising labor costs, and they don’t really have the ability to raise prices to the consumer because we’ve seen how hard it is for many Americans to afford things today. So companies walk that fine line between incurring input costs and not being able to raise prices.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So the White House, as you said, knows it has a problem, even if it doesn’t want to say clearly that it has a political problem because of that low consumer. But if you look, one of the ideas floating around is the president’s one-year break in credit card rates at 10% and somehow getting Congress to force that. He signed an executive order to restrict institutional investors from buying single-family homes. And then he floated this idea of ​​$2,000 checks, which may or may not require Congress. What do you think of these consumer-oriented parts of the program? Can they survive?

COHN: Look, I think it’s admirable that they understand that people are caught up in money today. They are stuck with insufficient income. So I think the White House is putting out ideas that will put more income back into the hands of consumers–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –This is not an idea that you would recommend while in that advisory role–

COHN: –Unfortunately, unfortunately, those ideas don’t solve the problem. In fact, credit card rates almost have the opposite effect. So credit card companies charge people a risk-adjusted rate for their loans. Obviously, the worse the credit, the higher the risk of default, the higher the rates. If you limit the rates that can be charged, what do companies do? They actually stop lending to the riskiest segment of the population. And so their consumers will lose purchasing power, not gain purchasing power. You know, on the housing side, one thing I remind people of is the housing hoarding that happened after the ’08 financial crisis. The more housing we have in the United States, the lower the prices. So the financial markets stepped in and put support under the housing market. And we cannot forget how important these financial players are in times of stress.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, we should also say that you worked for Goldman Sachs and were president there for a very long time, including that financial crisis. But let’s not take any of that away, but talk about someone you knew at that time. That was Kevin Warsh, former Fed governor and now President Trump’s pick to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. He called for all kinds of reforms for the Fed. What do you expect from him in the office?

COHN: So, look, I think we’re very fortunate to have Kevin nominated. Kevin has a unique background that comes as a chair. As you mentioned, he was a member of the Fed board before. He was there during the 2008 financial crisis. He contributed to that crisis. What I mean is that when the banks were under pressure, and we saw a lot of bank consolidation, we saw a lot of assets being moved into the system, Kevin was the point person at the Fed. He was involved in all those discussions. And I truly believe without Kevin’s expertise and without Kevin being there, we wouldn’t have gotten out of the 2008 crisis like we did. So you are very qualified. He will return the Fed to its traditional form of policy. You know, I think Kevin will stay out of most non-financial matters. He will participate, obviously, in setting interest rate policy. There is pressure right now for interest rates to come down. I think he will probably follow a cat or two this year. Kevin is also of the opinion that the Fed should not have a large balance sheet. You know, the Fed came in and bought a lot of securities–

MARGARET BRENNAN: — Limitation (inaudible)

COHN: I think Kevin is going to change that. I think he’s going to want the Fed to sell off its balance sheet. And on the regulatory front, I think Kevin is a person, he’s a traditionalist who believes that we need strong regulation in the United States, but it should be regulation that works and allows the market to grow and allow the consumer to have access to money. So I think you’re actually the perfect choice at this point in time. On Friday, when his nomination came out, the markets were talking.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.

COHN: And I think you have to look at what the markets are telling 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 25%. We saw gold drop 10%–

MARGARET BRENNAN: – The president spoke again last night at the dinner and said he would sue Warsh if he didn’t lower interest rates. Do you take that as a joke?

COHN: Yeah, I take it as a joke. Look, I think the president completely understands the independence of the Fed. Kevin has been a strong advocate of Fed independence.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, he’s got a confirmation process to go through, and we’ll see if Thom Tillis’ request for a Justice Department investigation into the current Fed chair stands in the way of really eliminating him. But we will follow that. Gary Cohn, always good to have you here.

COHN: Thanks for having me.

MARGARET BRENNAN: We’ll be right back.