Kudlow: 'Painful' Economy Will Turn Around in Weeks (AP)
By Sandy Fitzgerald | Friday, 03 April 2020 12:44 PM
The United States' economic situation will continue to be painful throughout upcoming weeks because of the damages caused by the coronavirus pandemic, but conditions may start to turn around in the next four to eight weeks, top White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Friday.
"This is not going to last throughout the year," Kudlow told Fox Business' Stuart Varney. "We will see a very strong economic recovery when this has played itself out...We are suffering through a very painful, very difficult economic contraction. That's the way I look at it. It's going to be temporary, but it's going to be very difficult.”
Meanwhile, Kudlow later told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" that he would not "guesstimate" the actual numbers of people who are unemployed after a report earlier this week that a record 6.6 million people had filed for benefits, but said those were "rough numbers."
"A lot of people are suffering, and I will say the weeks ahead I think the numbers are also going to be very poor," he told show host Sandra Smith. "It is an interruption of what was a very prosperous economy, an interruption from the virus and the necessary mitigation efforts to deal with the virus."
The recently passed coronavirus stimulus package devotes "enormous resources" to add cash and liquidity to keep people and families afloat. "We're doing everything we can to deal with it and make it perhaps a little easier," said Kudlow. "We are trying to save jobs, save payrolls and businesses so that when this virus runs its course, as it will, it is not permanent. This is a temporary issue. As it runs its course the American economy will be ready to snap back. I believe it will happen well before the end of the year...we've had health waves, problems like this before and come back pretty rapidly. "