During an interview with Fox Business on Tuesday, Director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett doubled down on his upbeat view of the economy<\/a>, arguing that the knock-on effects of the Iran war are only a \u201ctemporary circumstance.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhile people have been spending more money at gas stations, they\u2019ve been spending more money on everything else, which means that they\u2019re still very, very optimistic about the state of the economy, and they should be,\u201d Hassett told Maria Bartiromo<\/a>, while grinning outside the White House.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd so, despite this disruption, all the momentum that we built with \u2018The Big Beautiful Bill<\/a>\u2019 and AI and everything else is really, you know, is what the main economic story in the U.S. is,\u201d he stressed. \u201cThink about it: We\u2019ve got a capital spending boom, we\u2019ve got a labor supply boom because of the \u2018No Tax on Tips<\/a>\u2019\u2026you know, [the] stock market is celebrating.\u201d<\/p>\n Bartiromo, however, repeatedly pressed Hassett on the health of the economy, asking him when exactly Americans can expect gasoline prices<\/a> to come down in a \u201cmeaningful way.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think this thing can resolve itself much faster than people think,\u201d Hassett said, without providing a clear timeline for price decreases. He claimed a \u201cwave\u201d of excess energy would soon spread throughout the world.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, the national average price for a gallon of gasoline stood at $4.49 \u2014 up sharply from $2.98 in the days before the war began in February, according to AAA. As a result of the conflict, currently paused under a fragile ceasefire, the Strait of Hormuz<\/a> has been subject to dueling U.S. and Iranian blockades, fueling dramatic upticks in global oil costs and an across-the-board rise in inflation.<\/p>\n The Fox Business host noted that the consumer sentiment index, as reported by the University of Michigan, fell to a record-low 44.8 earlier this month, a 14.2 percent delcine year-on-year.<\/a> The consumer sentiment index is a monthly indicator about how optimistic or pessimistic consumers are about the overall economy and their personal finances.<\/p>\n But, Hassett dismissed this figure as inaccurate.<\/p>\n \u201cThey call it consumer sentiment but I don\u2019t think those words mean what they think they mean anymore,\u201d Hassett responded. \u201cThey\u2019ve somehow devised a political survey that tells us how Democrats are feeling about things.\u201d<\/p>\n Numerous other indicators, however, suggest the Republican president\u2019s stewardship of the economy is broadly unpopular.<\/p>\n Just 16 percent of Americans rate the country\u2019s current economic conditions as good or excellent, the lowest such figure since 2023, according to a Gallup survey released this month. And, among Republicans, approval of Trump\u2019s handling of the economy has fallen from 78 percent to 63 percent, according to the latest AP-NORC poll.<\/p>\n Elsewhere in the 20-minute interview, Bartiromo asked whether or not the top economist is worried about affordability ahead of the midterms, pointing to increases in the cost of groceries, insurance and housing.<\/p>\n In April, for instance, the price for food eaten at home rose 2.9 percent, the highest year-over-year inflation rate<\/a> for the category since August 2023. Food away from home also increased 3.6 percent over the last year, according to USDA<\/a> statistics.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got to do all of the above to get prices back down,\u201d Hassett said. \u201cWe\u2019re 100 percent concerned about affordability, but we\u2019re doing micro things and macro things to make sure inflation goes down.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-605576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"White](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-05-26-at-11-58-50-AM.png\")
White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett bragged that Americans are ‘spending more on everything’ \u2014 which he said means they are ‘very, very optimistic about the state of the economy’ (Fox Business, Mornings with Maria)<\/p>\n![\"On](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/GettyImages-2277557128.jpeg\")
On Tuesday, the national average price for a gallon of gasoline stood at $4.49 per gallon, according to AAA. Pictured here, a man fills up his car in Illinois over Memorial Day weekend (Getty Images)<\/p>\n