Larry Kudlow: New White House guidelines for re-opening the economy will get America back on track
White House National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow joins Sean Hannity to discuss President Trump's phased approach to restarting the U.S. economy.
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White House National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow admitted Thursday that the economic statistics for the second quarter of this year will be "pretty awful" as the U.S. continues to grapple with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
"Look, the important thing here is the president's guidelines with the doctors giving us a pathway to reopening the economy," Kudlow said on "Hannity." "We have to be safe. We have to be healthy."
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"We've got to have the right testing. We've got to have the right diagnostics. We've got to [have] the right hospitalization," Kudlow added. "All that should be in place. We have to practice, you know, best practicing for social distancing and so forth and so on."
Earlier Thursday, President Trump unveiled the White House’s plan for eventually rolling back social distancing measures and reopening the country’s economy in several phases, depending on location.
Kudlow focused on the potential of the new guidelines to give the country a boost, predicting May will be a "transition month" across America.
"The key point is we've laid out a pathway, [a] guideline for all the state governors across the country who will then begin to reopen the economy. It'll be done in phases," Kudlow said. "May will be a transition month. But this thing will get us back on track. I mean, the economy look, in the last four weeks, these numbers are very painful because they have hardship written all over them."
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Kudlow emphasized that because the economy was in such a strong position before the pandemic hit, the U.S. should be able to recover quickly.
"We had the truckers in the White House today, it was unbelievable," he said. "You know, people forget how important trucking is to this economy. Seventy percent of the freight hauled in the U.S. is done by truckers. Those are your supplies and your supply chains, and by the way, they've been working for the most part.
"Now, we can begin to open up the rest of the economy and because the economy was pretty darn strong, the Trump economy was pretty darn strong before this going in, we can recover that economic growth and get people working again. That's the key," Kudlow said. "And all we want to do is protect the workforce and the businesses so in the next few weeks, we can rebound. A rebound will come."
Fox News' Andrew O'Reilly contributed to this report.