You can’t look at one month and say I’m not going to do an improvement in the economic program,” Malpass told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Friday, shortly after the Trump campaign announced that Malpass was among a newly created economic team.
“You need tax cuts. You need trade reform. You need to have regulatory reform [and] energy reform. All those are critical to the long run of the economy,” said Malpass, president of economic and market research firm Encima Global.
Earlier Friday, the Labor Department reported that the economy created 255,000 new nonfarm jobs last month. The number was much better than expected. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.9 percent. Forecasts had called for a 4.8 percent rate.
“The big problem is the participation rate is still really low,” Malpass said. “What you have is a lot of people being left out of the upturn.” While still at generational lows, the government report showed the labor participation rate moved slightly higher.
“[Overall] these are great numbers this morning. We got to say some parts of the economy are doing well,” he conceded “[But] I think the economy is flat, meaning there’s not a strong business cycle.”
In addition to Malpass, other members of Trump’s economic team include hedge fund titan John Paulson, oil billionaire Harold Hamm, and Peter Navarro, an economics professor at the University of California, Irvine.
Trump plans to deliver a major economic policy speech in Detroit on Monday, providing more details on his proposed tax cuts, energy reform and health-care changes.
“We want to get an economy that’s hot enough to bring people in. We want an economy that sucks younger workers [and] minorities workers in,” said Malpass.
[“source -cncb”]
