Kevin Hassett, who heads the White House’s National Economic Council and serves as President Donald Trump‘s top economic adviser, is demanding that the Federal Reserve punish its own researchers after they published a study critical of tariffs. Hassett called the New York Fed’s study an “embarrassment” and said it was based on analysis that wouldn’t pass a first-semester economics class.
According to The Washington Post, the dispute started after the New York Fed released a study, finding that U.S. companies and consumers bore almost 90 percent of the economic burden from tariffs in 2025. The researchers wrote, “Our results show that the bulk of the tariff incidence continues to fall on U.S. firms and consumers,” adding that their findings align with other studies on U.S. import prices.
