Larry Kudlow is becoming President Trump’s top economic adviser even though he has occasionally aired public disagreements with Trump.
Most recently, Kudlow, a committed free-trade advocate, has directly criticized Trump for moving to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum.
“Steel and aluminum may win in the short term, but steel and aluminum users and consumers will lose,” Kudlow, a commentator for CNBC, wrote in an op-ed on the channel’s site this month. “In fact, tariff hikes are really tax hikes.”
Disagreement over the tariffs reportedly played a role in the decision of Gary Cohn, Trump’s previous National Economic Council director, to leave the White House. But Trump picked Kudlow regardless of his dissent on tariffs. He also has said that he prefers for advisers to argue with each other.
“I like conflict, I like having two people with different points of view, and I certainly have that,” Trump said at the White House this month.
Kudlow did moderate his criticism of Trump’s tariffs decision before the president’s decision to pick him as adviser.
“It’s a Trumpian way of negotiating,” Kudlow said of the tariffs announcement in a radio interview this weekend. “You knock them in the teeth and get their attention. And then you kind of work out a deal, and I think that’s what he’s done. My hat’s off to him. He had me really worried. Now I’m not.”
Still, as a television and radio personality and long time conservative pundit active on social media, Kudlow has on several occasions opposed White House policy or Trump’s statements.
He has passed along commentary critical of Trump’s rhetoric on foreign investment. He’s disagreed with Trump’s comments in favor of a weaker dollar. Last summer, he tweeted out a National Review editorial calling on Trump to condemn white supremacists, which Trump hesitated to do after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., that turned violent.
