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CNN Business
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Kevin Hassett, one among President Donald Trump’s high financial advisers, advised that Goldman Sachs could also be slanting its financial analysis to assist Democrats forward of the midterm elections.
The Goldman Sachs economics staff “almost at times looks like the Democratic opposition,” Hassett informed CNN’s Poppy Harlow on Tuesday.
The remark got here after Harlow requested Hassett a couple of Goldman Sachs analysis report warning {that a} 25% US tariff on all imports from China might wipe out company revenue progress in 2019.
Hassett stated he hadn’t learn the analysis, however went on to criticize Goldman’s observe document. Hassett claimed its evaluation of final yr’s tax cuts was “really, really wrong and timed in a partisan way.” He stated Goldman’s evaluation predicted the tax cuts could be “really harmful” to the economic system or have little influence earlier than jacking up its forecast after they handed.
“So maybe they’re just trying to make a partisan point before the elections,” stated Hassett, chairman of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers.
Keep in thoughts that Goldman Sachs (GS), like different funding banks, fees purchasers to entry their financial and market insights. Investors depend on that analysis to be nonpartisan.
Goldman Sachs declined to remark concerning the criticism.
It marks one other chapter in Team Trump’s love-hate relationship with Goldman Sachs, essentially the most highly effective agency on Wall Street.
Trump blasted Goldman Sachs in the course of the 2016 presidential marketing campaign. He claimed Goldman Sachs had “total, total control” over his rivals Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz.
Trump’s closing marketing campaign advert flashed a picture of Lloyd Blankfein, then the CEO of Goldman Sachs, because the candidate’s narration condemned the “global power structure” for robbing America’s working class.
After the election, Trump reversed course.
He named former Goldman Sachs accomplice Steve Mnuchin to the highly effective function of Treasury secretary. Trump employed Gary Cohn, a registered Democrat who was then president of Goldman Sachs, to be the face of his financial staff. (Cohn left earlier this yr due to a disagreement over commerce.)
In the 2016 race, Clinton obtained $388,426 from people at Goldman Sachs, greater than every other candidate, in accordance with OpenSecrets. Trump obtained $5,607, in accordance with OpenSecrets. Then once more, Goldman Sachs workers contributed extra to Republicans than Democrats total in 2016 federal races.
Blankfein backed Clinton within the election.
However, after the election, Blankfein gave Trump credit score for the hovering American economic system.
“If the president didn’t win, and Hillary Clinton won … I bet you the economy is higher today than it otherwise would be,” Blankfein informed CNN in February.
Veterans of Goldman Sachs have gone on to work in Republican and Democratic administrations. Robert Rubin, the previous co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, served as Treasury secretary beneath former President Bill Clinton.
Hank Paulson had been the chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs earlier than main the Treasury Department beneath former President George W. Bush in the course of the 2008 monetary disaster.