Zeke Miller and Jonathan Lemire, The Associated Press 

 



WASHINGTON -- Top economic adviser Gary Cohn is leaving the White House after breaking with U.S. President Donald Trump on trade policy, the latest in a string of high-level departures from the West Wing. Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, has been the leading internal opponent to Trump's planned tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum, working to orchestrate an eleventh-hour effort in recent days to get Trump to reverse course. Mr Trump's announcement last week of his plans to impose the tariffs sent US stock prices tumbling and came after an intense debate within the White House between Mr Cohn and other advocates of free trade, on one side, and protectionist advisers such as Peter Navarro on the other, White House sources said. Mr Cohn wasn't specific about the reasons, saying in a statement it had 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". Cohn told other White House aides in recent weeks that he would have little reason to stay if Trump followed through with his tariff plans, according to a White House official familiar with his views. "As a right-wing conservative and founding member of the Freedom Caucus, I never expected that the coworker I would work closest, and best, with at the White House would be a 'globalist,'" Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said in a statement. An editorial in the New York Times says Gary Cohn was "supposed to be among the sensible adults in the room.
U.S. National Economic Council director Gary Cohn announces his resignation.