Top Trump Economic Aide Predicts Zero Inflation If Iran War ‘Resolves Itself Somehow’

President Donald Trump’s National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett predicted zero inflation during a CNBC interview on Tuesday if the Iran war energy crisis “resolves itself somehow.”

CNBC anchor Sara Eisen grilled Hassett about the ongoing concerns of rising prices due to the war and the energy shock caused by it so far.

“Yeah, I mean, the grocery stuff has been better news, but, you know, electricity prices are high. People feel that. We’ve seen health insurance and medical fees high. We’ve seen airline fares go up. I mean, there are still pockets of hotter numbers, and Americans feel those too,” Eisen pressed.

Hassett replied, “Of course, and those things that you’re mentioning are energy-related, and anyone who looks at a chart for energy prices will see that they’ve gone up quite a bit since the situation with Iran began. But the president is confident that it can be resolved, and when it’s resolved, those prices will go right back down to where they were before.”

“And then if you do that, and you pile on top of that the fact that core inflation is running around 0.2% — in fact, for the Consumer Price Index, it rounded up to 0.2%, but it was actually in the 0.1% range — so when you’ve got that, plus imagine if oil prices start going back down because the situation resolves itself somehow, then you could be looking at inflation close to zero. So that’s something that the Fed needs to pay attention to, because remember, energy prices going down would feed through just as CPI — top-line CPI has had energy prices going up right now,” replied, offering a rosy take.

Watch the clip above via CNBC.

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