Kevin Hassett

Kevin Allen Hassett (born March 20, 1962) is an American economist who is a former Senior Advisor and Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2019. He has written several books and coauthored Dow 36,000, published in 1999, which argued that the stock market was about to have a massive swing upward and would reach 36,000 by 2004. Shortly thereafter, the dot-com bubble burst, causing a massive decline in stock market prices. The Dow finally did reach 36,000 as the Covid pandemic receded in late 2021.

Hassett has worked at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. He was John McCain's chief economic adviser in the 2000 presidential primaries, as well as economic adviser to the 2004 campaign of George W. Bush and 2008 campaign of McCain. He was an economic adviser on Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign.

In the Trump administration, Hassett was the 29th Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from September 2017 to June 2019. He returned to the White House in 2020 to work on the administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic. Hassett did not focus on public health policy, but rather influenced the administration's response from an economic angle amid lockdowns and social distancing. Hassett built a model that indicated that COVID-19 deaths would drop off to near zero by May 2020. Hassett's model contradicted assessments by public health experts, and was widely panned by academics and commentators.