White House chief adviser: Trump will not adjust economic policy despite election defeat

US President Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser Kevin Hassett has said the White House will not recalibrate its economic policy despite the Republican Party’s defeat in the midterm elections.

Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, told Bloomberg Television on Friday (6 November) that the Trump administration’s economic policies were working and did not need to change. He said the Democrats’ election victory did not mean voters had rejected Trump’s supply-side policies, which had put 120,000 Americans to work building new factories.

Hassett said Trump was indeed concerned that “the positive momentum he has built could be upended by Democrats now that they’ve taken more power”. But he believed that Democrats would face difficulties. “They’re going to have a really hard time repealing all the great policies which created the strong job market, because the president will veto it.”

He said US inflation remained high because of the US-Iran war’s impact on oil prices, while the Trump administration’s economic policies were actually helping to contain inflation. By contrast, he said, the previous Biden administration had taken an approach “where they basically helicopter-dropped money down to people after the Covid crisis was over”. This, he said, had caused inflation.

Democratic congressman Richard Neal, who is expected to return as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee next January, said he would do all he could to overturn Trump’s “unjustified” tariffs and trade-related “backroom deals”.

Speaking at a trade forum in Washington on Friday, Neal said Trump’s “deliberately chaotic and unjustified trade policies” had raised Americans’ cost of living and widened inequality between workers and the wealthiest. He pledged to reverse Trump’s tariff policies and advance trade policies based on good governance and transparency.

Neal did not specify how he would do so, but said his priority was to ensure Mexico and Canada remained in the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

The US will enter a transition period of nearly two months with a “lame-duck Congress” before Republicans hand control of both chambers to the Democrats on 3 January next year.

According to Bloomberg’s analysis, Trump and Republicans may use this final window to push through their bills or advance judicial and executive appointments.

Republicans are expected to prioritise securing congressional approval for a spending authorisation bill and additional funding for the US-Iran war. They are also expected to focus on passing government funding legislation, whether for a full year or on a temporary basis, to avert a government shutdown during the year-end holiday season. The current short-term funding measure expires on 11 December.

In the US, it is not unusual for some cabinet secretaries or other officials to leave office midway through an administration’s four-year term. According to Bloomberg, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is considering stepping down, while there is also speculation over whether Secretary of War Pete Hegseth will stay. Trump may therefore seek to speed up the confirmation of successors to these key posts while Republicans still control Congress.

At the same time, Trump may also accelerate efforts to secure congressional approval for his judicial nominees. Reuters reported that, as of the beginning of this month, nine of Trump’s judicial nominees were still awaiting approval by the Senate Judiciary Committee, while another 13 who had cleared the committee were awaiting confirmation votes by the full Senate.