{"id":407243,"date":"2018-03-07T06:27:50","date_gmt":"2018-03-07T06:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=407243"},"modified":"2018-03-07T06:27:50","modified_gmt":"2018-03-07T06:27:50","slug":"top-economic-policy-adviser-trump-resigns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=407243","title":{"rendered":"Top economic policy adviser for Trump resigns"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">US President Donald Trump&#8217;s top economic adviser\u00a0Gary Cohn\u00a0is resigning, the White House has said.<\/p>\n<p>It is the latest in a series of high-profile departures from President Trump&#8217;s team.<\/p>\n<p>There has been speculation that Mr Cohn, a supporter of free trade, was angered by Mr Trump&#8217;s plans to impose tariffs on aluminium and steel imports.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement released by the White House, Mr Cohn said it had been &#8220;an honour to serve my country&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The 57-year-old former president of the Goldman Sachs bank helped Mr Trump push through his sweeping tax reforms late last year.<\/p>\n<p>However, the two were not believed to be close.<\/p>\n<p>In August 2017, Mr Cohn criticised Mr Trump over his reaction to a far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, saying the administration &#8220;can and must do better&#8221;.\u00a0He was reported to have drafted a resignation letter after the event.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It has been an honour to serve my country and enact pro-growth economic policies to benefit the American people, in particular the passage of historic tax reform,&#8221; Mr Cohn said in his statement.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I am grateful to the president for giving me this opportunity and wish him and the administration great success in the future.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Analysis by Anthony Zurcher,\u00a0BBC News, Washington<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Gary Cohn\u00a0was a bit of a stranger in a strange land. He was a Democrat in a Republican White House; an economic globalist working for a president who campaigned on economic nationalism. Now, it seems, Donald Trump&#8217;s protectionist bent has pushed the top administration economic adviser to the exit.<\/p>\n<p>This was not an unexpected development. By many accounts, there had been a contentious White House fight over whether to impose sweeping sanctions on US steel and aluminium imports &#8211; a tug-of-war that was settled, precipitously, by the president himself last week.<\/p>\n<p>There were the rumours that Mr Cohn was only sticking around to see last year&#8217;s tax bill over the finish line, after his extreme discomfort following the president&#8217;s warm words about some of the white nationalist marchers involved in violent clashes in Charlottesville last August.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Cohn was reportedly viewed by many Trump loyalists in the White House as an unwelcome interloper. Some on the outside, particularly in the financial world, welcomed him as a moderating influence &#8211; along with son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka.<\/p>\n<p>Now the former is leaving and the latter two seem greatly weakened. All this could mark sharp new direction in White House policy.<\/p>\n<p>The White House said Mr Cohn&#8217;s exact departure date had yet to be determined.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For several weeks Gary had been discussing with the president that it was nearing time for him to transition out,&#8221; an official said.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-with-caption\">\n<div class=\"player-with-placeholder\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"media-placeholder player-with-placeholder__image narrative-video-placeholder\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/images\/ic\/720x405\/p060b15d.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>In a statement, Mr Trump described his outgoing economics adviser as &#8220;a rare talent&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Gary&#8230; did a superb job in driving our agenda, helping to deliver historic tax cuts and reforms and unleashing the American economy once again,&#8221; he said .<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He is a rare talent and I thank him for his dedicated service to the American people.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Mr Trump later tweeted\u00a0that he would pick Mr Cohn&#8217;s replacement &#8220;soon&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Many people wanting the job &#8211; will choose wisely!&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p>Possible candidates mooted by US media include White House adviser Peter Navarro and Larry Kudlow, a conservative commentator and 2016 campaign adviser.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier on Tuesday, President Trump tweeted that there was no chaos at the White House but there were &#8220;still&#8230; some people that I want to change&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The White House has seen a string of senior figures leave since Mr Trump took office.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, one of his closest aides, Hope Hicks, resigned. She was the fourth person to have served as the president&#8217;s communications chief.<\/p>\n<p>It came a day after she had testified in front of the House Intelligence Committee investigating possible Trump campaign ties to Russia, but White House sources said this was not the reason.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US President Donald Trump&#8217;s top economic adviser\u00a0Gary Cohn\u00a0is resigning, the White House has said. It is the latest in a series of high-profile departures from President Trump&#8217;s team. There has been speculation that Mr Cohn, a supporter of free trade, was angered by Mr Trump&#8217;s plans to impose tariffs on aluminium and steel imports. In [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":407246,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[264,17662],"class_list":["post-407243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-donald-trump","tag-gary-cohn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=407243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/407246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=407243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=407243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=407243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}