Jason Furman is one of the most influential Democratic economists of the past two decades. From 2013 to 2017 he chaired President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, where he helped shape tax, trade, and labor policy during a period of slow but steady postrecession recovery. Before that, he played a key role in crafting the 2009 stimulus. Today he is a professor at Harvard and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He's been in the news for his withering critique of former President Joe Biden's dismal economic record and his two-fisted attacks on President Donald Trump's trade policy.
Furman is perhaps best known for his technocratic approach to economics—he defends markets, trade, and budget discipline within a framework of pursuing broadly progressive goals. That makes him something of an outlier in today's Democratic Party, which moved sharply toward industrial policy, protectionism, and deficit-financed spending under Biden. In a recent essay titled "The Post-Neoliberal Delusion," Furman critiques this pivot and defends the "neoliberal" consensus as a coherent, rigorous, and beneficial way of thinking about economic policy.
