The following is a transcript of an interview with Gary Cohn, vice president of IBM and former director of the US National Economic Council, which aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on February 1, 2026.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Welcome back to Face the Nation. For the latest on the economy, we’re joined by Gary Cohn, who served as President Trump’s top economic adviser during his first term. He is now the vice president of IBM. Good to have you back here.

GARY COHN, VICE PRESIDENT, IBM: Thank you for having me.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So the president has this editorial in The Wall Street Journal claiming that all the economic success we’re seeing right now is the result of his tariff policy. The legality of some of these tariffs is now being debated before the Supreme Court. How factual do you rate his claim?

COHN: Well, I think we have to take a step back. The economy is currently quite strong on peak growth. So if you look at GDP, gross domestic product, which is the total output of the U.S. economy, right now we’re trending at about 5%, which is a very high growth rate in the United States, much higher than the baseline we’ve had over the last decade. So if you look at just that number, which is a good number to watch, things are going well. The inflation rate fell to a high of 2%. It’s still taller than we’d like. And the unemployment rate is increasing, but it is still at a reasonable place around 4, 4.5%. Overall, the economy is pretty strong right now. However, we have an interesting economy right now. We have a huge wealth effect at the top. And we have hardworking Americans who are having a very hard time paying their bills and are suffering in this economy. And I think the White House has acknowledged that they are suffering. I think part of the reason the president wrote the comment was to try to get in front of people who are having a hard time paying their bills and covering their expenses. The White House goes on the offensive. The president will spend time on the road talking about accessibility. Affordability will be an issue.

MARGARET BRENNAN: He says it’s a scam.

COHN: Well, I think availability is going to be an issue between now and the midterms.

MARGARET BRENNAN: That’s right. We know that the chief of staff said she wanted the president to talk about the economy there. But you just mentioned what consumers feel. The White House says people will simply feel better after tax season. You wrote the original tax law that Congress just renewed and expanded. But you see companies like Amazon announcing 16,000 corporate job cuts. MasterCard is laying off 4% of its 35,000-strong workforce. UPS, 30,000 jobs gone. Dow, 4500. Home Depot, 800. If everything is going in a positive direction, what’s going on there?

COHN: So we saw more than 60,000 additional layoffs from companies last week during the earnings season. This is typical when companies talk about cost management. Today’s companies have two basic things. Number one, companies hoarded labor during and after COVID. When we worked from home and people were remote, productivity dropped and companies worried about getting work done. So most companies end up hiring more people or not firing anyone. That’s how the workforce grew. And I think we’re now in a part of the cycle where corporate America is very comfortable changing people. They are very comfortable employing people. Therefore, they reduce the number of employees from accumulation to a kind of more naturalized level. And I think a lot of those numbers that we saw released this week were companies that cut themselves. In addition, we’ve seen input costs for companies rise quite dramatically, whether it’s labor costs, commodity costs or tariffs, as we agree. Someone has to pay the tariffs. As companies try to balance their equation–

MARGARET BRENNAN: — the president says there are no costs that will hurt the company.

COHN: But he also says there’s more than $200 billion in the account of the money they’ve raised. So, someone pays the money. So corporations pay money. They’re trying to figure out how to deal with rising input costs, falling tariffs, rising labor costs, and they don’t really have the ability to raise prices for consumers because we’ve seen how hard it is for many Americans today to afford things. So companies walk that fine line between absorbing input costs and not being able to raise prices.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So the White House, as you said, they’re aware that they have a problem, even if they don’t want to explicitly say that they have a political problem because of that lower-class consumer. But when you look at it, one of the ideas that has been floated by the president is to cap credit card rates at 10% for one year and kind of get Congress to force that. He signed an executive order restricting institutional investors from buying single-family homes. And then he brought up the idea of ​​$2,000 checks, which may or may not be required by Congress. What do you think of these consumer-focused parts of the plan? Are they sustainable?

COHN: Look, I think it’s admirable that they realize that people today are trapped in cash. They are stuck with insufficient disposable income. So I think the White House is throwing out ideas that will put more disposable income back into the hands of consumers–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –These are not ideas that you would support when you were in an advisory role–

COHN: –Unfortunately, unfortunately, those ideas probably don’t solve the problem. In fact, credit card rates probably have the opposite effect. So credit card companies charge people a risk-adjusted rate to lend them money. Obviously, the worst credit, the people most likely to pay the highest rates. If you limit the rates that can be charged, what do companies do? They actually stop giving loans to the most risky part of the population. And so their consumers will lose purchasing power, not gain purchasing power. You know, on the housing side, the one thing I remind people of is the institutional housing accumulation that happened after the ’08 financial crisis. When we had a huge housing glut in the United States, prices fell. So the financial markets stepped in and put support under the real estate market. And we cannot forget how important these financial players are in times of stress.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, we should also say that you worked for Goldman Sachs and were president there for a very long time, including during that financial crisis. But let’s not repeat any of that, but let’s talk about someone you met during that time. It was Kevin Warsh, who was the governor of the Fed, and now President Trump has chosen him to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. He called for all kinds of Fed reforms. What do you expect from him in office?

COHN: So, look, I think we’re very fortunate to have Kevin nominated. Kevin has a unique background presiding. As you said, he used to be a member of the Fed board. He was there during the 2008 financial crisis. He was instrumental in that crisis. By that I mean when the banks were going through stress, and we saw a lot of bank mergers, we saw a lot of assets being moved around the system, Kevin was the point person at the Fed. He was involved in each of these discussions. And I truly believe that without Kevin’s expertise and without Kevin’s presence, we would not have come out of the 2008 crisis as well as we did. So he is very highly qualified. He will return the Fed to its traditional kind of norms. You know, I think Kevin will stay out of a lot of non-financial matters. He will obviously be involved in setting interest rate policy. There is currently pressure to lower interest rates. I think he will probably continue with one to two cuts this year. Kevin also believes that the Fed should not have a large balance sheet. You know, the Fed came in and bought a huge amount of securities–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –quantitative easing (inaudible)

COHN: I think Kevin will turn it around. I think they will ask the Fed to sell their balance sheet. And on the regulatory front, I think Kevin is a traditionalist who believes that we need strong regulation in the United States, but it has to be regulation that works and allows the market to grow and allows the consumer access to capital. So I think he’s actually totally the right choice in this time period. And on Friday, when his nomination was announced, the markets spoke.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.

COHN: And I think you have to look at what the markets are telling you because those are real-time feedback indicators.

MARGARET BRENNAN: That’s right.

COHN: So we’ve seen the dollar strengthen by about 1%. We have seen silver drop by 25%. We’ve seen gold drop 10%–

MARGARET BRENNAN: — the president also spoke at the dinner last night and said he was going to sue Warsh if he didn’t cut interest rates. Do you take that as a joke?

COHN: Yeah, I take that as a joke. Look, I think the president fully understands the independence of the Fed. Kevin was a staunch advocate of Fed independence.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, he has to go through the confirmation process, and we’ll see if Thom Tillis’ request for a Justice Department investigation into the current chairman of the Federal Reserve gets in the way of him actually going through. But we will follow it. Gary Cohn, it’s always great to have you here.

COHN: Thanks for having me.

MARGARET BRENNAN: We’ll be right back.