Hassett Calls It 'the Best Economy We've Ever Seen,' Says Canada Deal Is 'Very Close'

Kevin Hassett, President Trump's top economic adviser and director of the White House National Economic Council, went on Fox News' The Sunday Briefing nine days before the midterms and said out loud what the White House wants every voter to hear: "The great big picture about this economy is that it's about the best economy we've ever seen" (Fox News).

He also made news. Asked by host Jacqui Heinrich why Trump's tariffs haven't produced a trade deal with Canada yet, Hassett said the talks "have picked up," they're "gathering steam," and "I think it's very close to finally having a deal on that."

Why it matters: the Nov. 3 election is being fought over prices. Regular gas is $4.29 a gallon on AAA's national average today, and Democrats from Karine Jean-Pierre on down say the White House is ignoring the pain. Hassett came with receipts and a straight answer on the pain, and that's a different pitch than the one that sank Biden.

The numbers he brought. Hassett said business investment was "$1.4 trillion" in Biden's last year and "is going to be about $3 trillion" this year. "So business investment in the U.S. doubled, doubled since President Trump took office." Consumer spending, he said, was "$16 trillion" in 2024 and will "top $17 trillion" this year, which he put at "about $6,000 to $7,000 per family better off" after inflation and high energy prices. And on jobs: "Fewer people are being laid off in America right now than ever all the way back to World War II, even though the labor force is much bigger."

Those investment and spending totals are full-year White House figures for a year that isn't over, so read them as the administration's projection. The jobs claim is the one you can check this week. The Labor Department's latest weekly report counted 194,000 new jobless claims for the week ended Oct. 17, down 6,000 from the week before. That is a very low number. Employers aren't cutting people loose.

Inflation is more of a split screen. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' September report put overall prices up 3.7% from a year earlier, up from 3.4% in August. But core inflation, which strips out food and energy, was just 2.6%. Gasoline alone was up 34.2% over the year. Think of a family whose paycheck is steady and whose rent is under control, but whose gas bill blew up. The household isn't broke. The gas bill is the problem.

Hassett didn't pretend otherwise. "Now sure, there are going to be pockets that need some repairs," he said, and "as President Trump said, energy prices will drop like a rock, and then the three or four percent growth that we have right now will go even higher." His bottom line: "To characterize the economy as a negative thing right now, it's really just misrepresenting the facts."

He opened with a nod to Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas, who was on the show just before him defending the tariffs and pointing to Ukraine's drone strikes on Russian diesel refineries as a driver of fuel prices. "I was really impressed with Senator Marshall because he was so facile with so many different numbers," Hassett said. "And they were the correct numbers."

Canada: what's holding it up. Heinrich read Sen. Susan Collins's post on the latest Canadian tariff exemptions for Maine growers. Collins announced Friday that nine categories of Canadian goods, from corrugated cartons and plastic crates to sorting machines and food-grade seaweed, are coming off the tariff list after her talks with Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Her line: Maine farmers rely on gear "that are either unavailable from American suppliers or cannot be replaced without incurring significant expense" (Sen. Collins). The same White House order slapped the 50% tariff on about 100 other Canadian products, from shampoo to carpet, effective Oct. 30. We broke down that swap here.

Hassett blamed the delay on Canadian politics. "The Canadian election that just happened, including Alberta separating, made it so that it was essentially impossible to negotiate with the Canadians," he said. "Secretary Lutnick has been talking to his Canadian counterparts all week."

Here's the piece other coverage skipped. Alberta did not leave. In the province's Oct. 19 referendum, 74.93% of voters said no to starting the legal process toward a binding separation vote, against 25.07% who said yes, according to Elections Alberta's unofficial results. Hassett's point is that nobody could close a trade deal while a big chunk of Canada's oil country was openly debating whether to stay in the country. That question is now settled, and the talks have picked back up.

Hassett also made Maine's case for the White House, saying Trump negotiated what he called "a sort of cease-fire with the Europeans" so Maine lobstermen could keep shipping to Europe, and that "the welfare of Maine growers and Maine fishermen, and especially the fishermen in Alaska, has been a key focus of this White House."

The Jean-Pierre fight. Heinrich read from Jean-Pierre's Oct. 2 New York Times guest essay, "This Mistake Doomed Biden. Trump Is Falling Into the Same Trap." Biden's former press secretary wrote that "Mr. Trump's refrain that we're the 'hottest country anywhere in the world' is a no-sale" and that "he's barely acknowledging Americans' legitimate economic worries."

Hassett's answer was the sharpest line of the morning. "It's so logically simple to respond to that, although logic isn't really something the Biden administration was very good at," he said. "They had 20 percent inflation aggregate through their term. Real incomes under Joe Biden dropped by about $3,000. And then they went out there and said, hey, this is a great economy, people. But the data said otherwise."

The government's own index backs up the first part. The BLS consumer price index for all urban consumers stood at 261.582 in January 2021, the month Biden took office, and 317.671 in January 2025, the month he left. That is a 21% jump in four years. Jean-Pierre's essay says inflation "had come down considerably" by the end of Biden's term. It came down from a 9.1% peak, but the prices never went back.

Then came the contrast Hassett wants voters to remember: "We understand that people are frustrated with high gas prices and high grocery prices, and we've been working really hard on that." He pointed to beef ("did you notice that beef prices have dropped four in the last five months?") and closed with this: "Biden said the economy's great and the economy was terrible. We're saying there's things that we need to fix, and the economy is strong, and we've got the data to prove it."

What comes next. The Canada tariff changes take effect Oct. 30. Lutnick's talks with Ottawa are the thing to watch for a deal before or right after Election Day. And on Nov. 3, voters decide whether the jobs numbers or the gas pump wins the argument. Hassett's bet is that you can admit the gas bill hurts and still tell the truth about the rest of the economy. Biden never tried the first half.