Gary Cohn is reportedly sometimes a lonely voice in Trump’s inner sanctum, delivering economic insights others have not shared with the President Trump.
A few weeks after the election, Gary Cohn, the president of Goldman Sachs, was summoned to Trump Tower for a discussion about the economy. It would be the first of many such meetings with President-elect Donald Trump.
During that sit-down, on Nov. 29, Cohn briefed Trump on what he regarded as the chief hurdle to expanding the economy, according to people who were briefed on the discussion: a stronger dollar, which would undermine efforts to create jobs.
Cohn also argued that the bold infrastructure projects Trump envisioned would need private-industry partners, those people said, in order to avoid weighing down the government with costs.
That got Trump’s attention.
The president-elect turned to the other people in the room — his son-in-law, Jared Kushner; his chief strategist, Stephen Bannon; his chief of staff, Reince Priebus; and Steven T. Mnuchin, his campaign’s chief fundraiser and now Trump’s Treasury secretary — surprised that his infrastructure ideas had such a potential downside.
“Is this true?” Trump asked the group, according to those people. Heads nodded. “Why did I have to wait to have this guy tell me?” he demanded.
It would not be the only time Cohn was a lonely voice in Trump’s inner sanctum. Two and a half months after that initial meeting, with key economic posts in the White House and Cabinet still vacant, he has become the go-to figure on matters related to jobs, business and growth. He resigned from his position at Goldman in December to become director of the president’s National Economic Council.
People with knowledge of his new role said that Cohn, a Democrat, is summoned to the Oval Office for impromptu meetings with the president up to five times a day — and that he reaches out to the president on other occasions. Trump, said one of these people, is oriented toward the bottom line when it comes to shaping policy, often asking Cohn, “What do you want to do?”
The direct access to the president has been crucial as Cohn navigates a White House where Bannon and policy director Stephen Miller are power brokers whose world views differ from his, and where unexpected presidential complaints, broadcast on Twitter, can significantly recalibrate the day’s agenda.
Topping Cohn’s current to-do list: corporate and individual tax reforms, to be carried out at the same time; improvements to infrastructure to create new jobs; and regulatory relief in general.
He is also studying how to revamp the Affordable Care Act, which Trump vowed during the campaign to repeal — a promise that is proving to be more complicated to keep than he had expected.
Orin Snyder, a corporate litigator and longtime friend of Cohn’s who speaks to him regularly, said, “He is working around the clock, energized and focused like a laser beam on developing the best plan for implementing the president’s economic agenda.”
Trump has already vowed to dismantle the Dodd-Frank Act, the financial-regulation law that was passed in 2010, and has ordered a reassessment of an Obama-era rule requiring financial advisers to act in the best interest of their clients.
Those efforts have generated outrage in some quarters. “The way I see this, there was a devastating financial crisis just over eight years ago,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said. “Goldman Sachs was at the heart of that crisis. The idea that the president is now going to turn over the country’s economic policy to a senior Goldman executive turns my stomach.”
It is not just that Cohn, 56, has a prominent role in economic policy; he is one of the few senior administration officials addressing those issues on the job right now.
Cohn collaborates frequently with Kushner, who is now a senior adviser to Trump. Along with Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, Cohn recently helped persuade the president not to pursue an executive order that would have rolled back rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
And when Trump lashes out publicly at a major company or orders a travel ban that inspires wide criticism, from Silicon Valley to Goldman, Cohn hunkers down on the policy work, people who have observed him said.
Cohn was not looking for a new job when he first encountered Kushner last year at the behest of Michael Ovitz, the former Hollywood agent who is a mutual friend, according to two people with knowledge of that meeting. Despite the generational divide — Kushner is 36 — the men hit it off, the two people said, and after Trump’s upset victory on Nov. 8, a meeting with Cohn was quickly arranged.
On Dec. 12, Cohn’s new post as National Economic Council director was announced, touching off a rapid career transition that included making extensive financial disclosures, preparing to sell or forfeit an enormous amount of Goldman stock and walling himself off from pending matters that could have posed a conflict of interest.
Cohn’s 26-year career at Goldman, where he performed an array of jobs, including trading commodities, running mortgages and eventually overseeing day-to-day operations, ended with a remarkable windfall: cash and stock valued at $285 million.
Warren and other critics, who have raised questions about Cohn’s communications with Goldman employees on policy matters since joining the government, find that sum objectionable.
A White House spokeswoman had no immediate comment, and a spokesman for Goldman said in a statement that the firm had not been involved in formulating any of the president’s executive orders.