Aug. 13 (UPI) — President Donald Trump called for Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon to replace its chief economist after a prediction that consumers would pay the brunt of the cost for tariffs.
Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Tuesday that Solomon and Goldman Sachs “refuse to give credit where credit is due” as he sought to minimize the impact of tariffs on consumers and tout the economic benefits.
“Trillions of dollars are being taken in on tariffs, which has been incredible for our country, its stock market, its general wealth and just about everything else. It has been proven, that even at this late stage, tariffs have not caused inflation or any other problems for America, other than massive amounts of CASH pouring into our Treasury’s coffers. Also, it has been shown that, for the most part, consumers aren’t even paying these tariffs; it is mostly companies and governments, many of them foreign, picking up the tabs,” Trump said without citing any specific data.
Trump’s comments came after Goldman Sachs published a report on Sunday that Americans have so far absorbed 22% of the cost of tariffs through June, but it predicts that percentage could rise to 67% by October if tariffs continue the same pattern.
The report was authored in part by Jan Hatzius, Goldman Sachs chief economist since 2011, who also wrote in a blog published on July 30 that the U.S. Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, “is forecast to only expand about 1% this year as tariff rates rise.”
Trump did not mention Hatzius, who is a member of the economic advisory panels of the Congressional Budget Office and Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, by name, but criticized the leadership of Solomon, who had served as a DJ for years at various events, often under the moniker “DJ D-Sol,” and called for him to name a new economist.
“David Solomon and Goldman Sachs refuse to give credit where credit is due. They made a bad prediction a long time ago on both the market repercussions and the tariffs themselves, and they were wrong, just like they are wrong about so much else,” Trump wrote. “I think that David should go out and get himself a new economist or, maybe, he ought to just focus on being a DJ, and not bother running a major financial institution.”
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