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Quote: “America is open for business, and we are competitive once again.” End quote. That was just one of the key lines in President Trump’s highly successful Davos speech this week. Of course, in going to Davos, Trump entered the lion’s den. A year ago such a visit would have been a poor idea. Back then, elitist heads of state, the EU bureaucrats, and the international CEOs were uniformly against Donald Trump. But Trump’s 2018 Davos strategy was a brilliant stroke. A year later he could make the fact-based argument that, in his words, “The world is witnessing the...

There were two big money-and-politics stories in the first week of the new year: The Dow Jones soared 577 points and Steve Bannon ended his political career. Are these two events related? Perhaps more than you might think. Bannon’s peculiar notions of populism were essentially anti-growth. He believed higher taxes, ultra-protectionism, and a cheap dollar would help the middle class. Supply-siders like me know these policies only damage the economy, with the middle and lower classes suffering the most. And though Bannon was pushed out of the White House months ago, he apparently still had the president’s ear. So his...

With President Trump's signing of the big tax cut bill, the Republican Party snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Suddenly, the political and economic landscapes have changed. The GOP has turned the tables on the Democrats. With the passage of this powerful tax-cut legislation to boost business investment, wages and take-home family pay, Trump and the GOP are on the side of the growth angels. The Democrats, meanwhile, are left with stale class-warfare slogans about tax cuts for the rich. Ironically, government unions, with their pension plans heavily invested in equity shares, will benefit hugely from the tax-cut-led...

With President Trump’s signing of the big tax-cut bill, the GOP snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Suddenly, the political and economic landscapes have changed. The Republican party has turned the tables on the Democrats. *snip* At the old 35 percent rate, our companies took home 65 cents on the extra dollar. At the new 21 percent rate, they’ll take home 79 cents. This enormous 21 percent incentive rewards new risk-taking, investment, a recycling of overseas profits to the U.S., and additional after-tax profitability. Combined with 100 percent immediate cash write-offs for new investment, and the one-time repatriation of...

Last week during an address at the White House, President Donald Trump likened his tax plan to the tax cut that John F. Kennedy proposed 55 years ago. This elicited some howls of protest from Trump's liberal critics, who say it's historically inaccurate to compare the Trump plan to JFK's. Is it? In 1963 Kennedy proposed a tax cut that slashed business and individual tax rates by about 30 percent. It's true that tax rates were a lot higher then (90 percent in some cases) than now. But the philosophy was the same: Lower taxes will get businesses, investors and...

Now, Russia still has a lot of oil and gas reserves. And it uses this to bully Eastern and Western Europe. It threatens to cut off these resources if Europe dares to complain about Putin power-grabs in Crimea, eastern Ukraine, the Baltics, and elsewhere. But enter President Donald Trump. In his brilliant speech in Warsaw, Poland, earlier this week, he called Putin’s energy bluff. It may well have been the best speech of his young presidency. Trump delivered a stirring leadership message, emphasizing the importance of God, freedom, strong families, and democratic values. But in an absolutely key part of...

Virtually the whole world is beating up on the Trump administration for daring to predict that low marginal tax rates, regulatory rollbacks, and the repeal of Obamacare will generate 3 to 3.5 percent economic growth in the years ahead. In a CNBC interview last week, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin held the line on this forecast. He also argued the need for dynamic budget scoring to capture the effects of faster growth. Good for him. But what’s so interesting about all the economic-growth naysaying today is that President Obama’s first budget forecast roughly eight years ago was much rosier than Trump’s....

...Kudlow is being eyed by the incoming Donald Trump administration as the next Council of Economic Advisers Chairman. Kudlow is not afraid of good ideas, nor does he dismiss good policies solely because they come from the Democratic Party... ...Kudlow understands this well, and will bring this common sense to a CEA that has too often embraced what is senseless. Sadly, it’s not just on the subject of inflation that credentialed economists have lost their way. To see why this is true, ask most any economist what ended the Great Depression. Almost to a man and woman the reply will...

President-elect Donald Trump's transition continues to go smoothly. Better than smoothly. Confidently. More than confidently. Transcendently. And to top it all off, the Dow is up 9 percent since the election, while economic-sensitive small-caps have jumped nearly 16 percent. These are signs of Trump confidence. Hard-nosed investment manager Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates and a non-political guy, expects the Trump years to be as transformational as the Reagan-Thatcher years. Dalio says the Trump era could "ignite animal spirits" and "shift the environment from one that makes profit-makers villains with limited power to one that makes them heroes with significant...

  "The single most significant, inter-galactic, extra-celestial, interplanetary, and spiritual force behind the global stock market rally is the decline of inflation to rates not seen in over thirty years. While many industrial nations, including the U.S., have imposed anti-growth and anti-saving tax increases in recent years, fiscal drag has been offset by a steady decline of inflation. Inflation is a tax on money, wealth creation, income, and work effort. Inflation is a devastating tax on savings. But low inflation is a tax cut. By enhancing the value of financial assets, price stability rewards patient savers and investors. It...

President-elect Donald Trump's administration is planning to nominate political commentator and economic analyst Larry Kudlow to chair the Council of Economic Advisers. Stephen Moore, a conservative economist who advised Trump's presidential campaign, said at a luncheon in Michigan that Trump was set to choose Kudlow to be next chair of the council, a source who was in attendance told Business Insider. The Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the deliberations, reported that a final decision has not been made. The council sits within the executive office and advises the president on economic policy. Trump's transition team and Kudlow's office...

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Great Interview by Larry Kudlow today with former US Attorney Joe DiGenova over FBI director James Comey and his handling of Hillary Clinton's email scandal. Click on the October 29, 2016 podcast, it starts about 19 minutes in and ends at about the 33 minute mark. DiGenova says the Bureau was going to mutiny unless Comey opened up this investigation again and the agents there now are of the opinion that Comey is a "dirty cop".

While the mainstream media didn’t give Donald Trump much credit, the economic plan he laid out this week at the Detroit Economic Club is exactly what we’ve been waiting for. Not only did the speech—which stirred repeated cheers from the audience—have great substance, but Trump came off as extremely “presidential.” However, most importantly, I liked the focus he placed on the average American in his remarks. All throughout his presentation, I couldn’t help thinking: “This is someone who truly does care about the average American.” Maybe you don’t believe that. But I do. I think Trump is aware that American...

Trump is the pro-growth candidate in this race. Hillary Clinton is the anti-growth candidate. Trump wants to expand national income and the economic pie. Clinton wants to redistribute income and shrink the pie. In past columns, I have equated Trump's tax-reduction plan to the JFK and Ronald Reagan tax cuts, which generated economic booms of roughly 5 percent growth per year. President Barack Obama, by comparison, has raised taxes, spending, and regulations, producing the worst recovery since World War II. And Clinton intends to follow in Obama's footsteps with a Bernie Sanders-like, left-wing policy mix. She is the Democrats' anti-JFK....

Ted Cruz essentially gave a career-ending speech at the GOP convention on Wednesday night. Cruz's speech was a slap in the face to GOP nominee Donald Trump. "Vote your conscience" is a wonderful-sounding phrase. But we all know what he meant: Don't vote for Donald Trump. I was in the convention hall and the crowd's reaction was unbelievable. It started out as a few hands waving in the air and some booing, and then it just grew and grew throughout the entire convention hall. And then boom! It was absolute bedlam. I've been to most of the GOP conventions since...

Donald Trump hit two home runs this week. The first, immediately following the horrific terrorist truck attack in Nice, was his statement in a media interview wherein he said that if elected, he would ask Congress for a declaration of war to combat global terrorism. The second was the inspired selection of Indiana governor Mike Pence to join the GOP ticket. Before getting to Pence, let me linger a moment on Trump's declaration-of-war pronouncement. For well over a year, I have argued for a Washington wake-up call whereby the president and Congress enact a formal declaration of war against ISIS...

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“Overthrow the establishment. Now's the time,” said the CNBC senior contributor who also hosts a syndicated radio-talk show. "Overthrow the establishment," urged Kudlow, who was a former economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan. “We need a different model. In other words, zero interest rates, or negative interest rates, and tons and tons of government spending for all these G-7 countries have not worked,” he said. “We have global stagnation, a virtual global recession. And we have virtually no inflation,” he said “Something's got to change here,” he said. He offered his own solution to right the sinking U.S. economic ship....

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan joined nationally syndicated conservative talk radio host Larry Kudlow earlier this week, sounding similar on various policy stances to presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. Kudlow said Ryan seemed to be on the same page as Trump on energy policy following Trump’s speech in North Dakota on Thursday. “Donald and I have been talking the last few weeks about all of these ideas and we’re making sure we get on the same page on principles and then the policies that come from those principles and those are very productive talks that are happening,” Ryan told...