President Trump’s former economic adviser Gary Cohn said Thursday that the government needs to be reopened, and he implied Trump needs to take a softer stance on immigration.
“The government should be open,” Cohn said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “To put 800,000 government employees out of work, to fight over, you know, a wall and immigration. We need immigration in the United States. We need legal immigration in the United States.”
Cohn didn’t say explicitly that Trump needs to cave, but he spoke at length about the need for more immigrants in the United States. Trump has said he won’t sign any bill funding the unfunded parts of the government unless it includes money for Trump’s border wall.
“The United States has been built on immigration,” Cohn said. “And that’s how we’ve grown our economy. That’s how we’ve continued to create jobs.”
“Look at where we are in the United States right now,” he added. “We have over 7 million job openings. We have less than 7 million unemployed people in the United States. If we want to continue to grow our economy, there’s only one way to do it. Allow immigrants in the country. They should be legal. And we should have a mechanism for them to come into the country.”
[Also read: Trump economic adviser warns that the shutdown could slow economic growth to ‘zero’]
A former investment banker, Cohn resigned as Trump’s top economic adviser last March after the president announced steep tariffs on Chinese goods.
Trump did not attend the event this year as he continues to negotiate with Democrats over funding for his promised $5.7 billion border wall with Mexico. The government has been partially shut down for more than 30 days while the two sides debate the issue.
