Transcript: Gary Cohn on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” June 14, 2026
The following is the transcript of an interview with Gary Cohn, vice chairman of IBM and director of the National Economic Council under President Trump, which aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on June 14, 2026.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re now joined by Gary Cohn, who is President Trump’s top economic adviser in his first term. He is currently the Vice Chairman at IBM. Good to have you back here.
GARY COHN: Thanks for having me.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, Secretary Hague says he didn’t provide a lot of clarity at the exact time. He said both Straits of Hormuz will be opened soon, but it may take 30 days. What is important to the economy here, will be the impact of what happens with oil and gas prices. Should American consumers expect the prices they pay for their food and gas and everything else to drop?
GARY COHN: It’s not going to fall like a stone overnight. We will have to see exactly what happens in the problems. It was unclear how soon they would open. But as they open up, we will begin to experience a change in psychology. People will start thinking that prices are going down, and they will continue to go down. If you are in a place where the price is going up, people tend to fill up their tanks early because they think the prices will go up next week, and they tend not to let their tanks go down if you are in a place where you think the price will go down, people tend to drive their cars until they are almost empty, because they think that the longer I wait, the cheaper fuel will be. So we’re going to be in a mindset shift when the issues open up, and as the oil starts to come out, we’re going to start seeing some impact. We’ve actually already seen some impact, you know we’re—gas prices—I won’t say exactly, but they’re down 10% from their last spike, and if we open the straits, I think we’re going to continue to see these gas prices go down. But, as you point out, it’s not just the price of fuel, it’s the price of groceries, the price of energy that goes into the whole economy, it feeds through production, it feeds through delivery, it feeds through everything that we eat as everyday consumers.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And what you’re talking about, the prices, you’re talking about the market price, but the consumer price, if the companies have already raised the price of food, are they really going to bring it back down?
GARY COHN: Well, they’re going to bring it back, the price of energy is going to come back down, so the energy part is going to come back down, whether the actual food in the grocery store is going to come back down, you know, it’s going to take some time. There’s always, there’s always pressure, and it takes a first mover to show some leadership, you know. We’ve seen prices go up, and then when someone wants to bring traffic to their store, they tend to lower the price of a good, and you, as a consumer, say, Hey, that good is cheaper at that store. I then go into that store, and another store that needs to match their price, so the open market will lower prices over time.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Because, as Senator Warner was talking about, those oil commodities, the oil stocks for sale, hit some dangerous levels in July that could cause a second price cycle. Goldman Sachs said, what, $10 higher per barrel than before the war, because there’s this new security money built in here, given all the strength you’re seeing in the economy right now. Do you think the Federal Reserve can really do the kind of rate cut that President Trump says he wants to see?
GARY COHN: Margaret, we’ve used up a lot of oil around the world, all the major economies have surpluses, and those surpluses are relatively cheap. So, I understand what everyone is worried about. Therefore, bringing oil back online is now important when it comes to the Federal Reserve. Look, we have a new chairman of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh. I think Kevin absolutely agrees with where we are in the economy. You understand that we have the highest inflation in three years. He also understands that the job market is relatively tight, yes, relatively strong, and he understands that there is pressure to lower interest rates. I think Kevin will remove himself from political pressure, and do the right thing economically. Kevin, you know, this is not his first time at the Federal Reserve, he was the governor of the Fed before. I think Kevin will approach this as a traditional Fed governor. He will remain heavily involved in his line of monetary policy. I think he’s going to stay out of the secondary issues that the Fed just got into, and I think he’s going to be in a position where he’s going to go based on what he actually sees in the economy, not what he hopes to see in the economy.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You also made it clear that you think the way we judge the economy may need to change and look at data differently. Until then, what we’ve seen this past week with SpaceX has been pretty amazing. Elon Musk is the first trillionaire with a T. SpaceX, they make rocket ships. They want to put AI data centers in space. They want to mine asteroids. I mean, it sounds like it’s straight out of the movies, but this was the first big game to go public this week, the biggest ever. We will see more AI companies also go public. Where are we in the boom?
GARY COHN: So, Margaret, this is a time to celebrate. We should celebrate the American spirit of entrepreneurship. We should celebrate the talents of American engineers. We should celebrate the fact that we are solving some of the biggest problems in the world, and if we in America weren’t solving these problems, neither were the Chinese, we would be behind them or be. Paying them to solve our problems, if they were willing to sell us a solution. So, I consider this a great celebration of the American entrepreneurial spirit. As you said, it doesn’t stop SpaceX, and SpaceX is now almost a 25-year-old company, where Elon Musk himself says there is a 10% chance that the company will survive. Now we have several companies, almost at that level, that are changing the way you and I live, and how we will change our lives going forward. And these are American-based companies, American entrepreneurs, American technology, and American engineers. We should be lucky that we have these companies here at home, and we don’t have to lure them to the United States.
MARGARET BRENNAN: What’s driving this change, there’s this whole debate about whether it’s good or bad for American workers. The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, a conservative leaning, as you know, praised SpaceX’s profits, created jobs in working-class communities, and said they gave their employees stock options, so they made blue-collar workers undoubtedly millions, right? But by doing something like that, that’s .. I mean, this is a special case, clearly. But what is the impact on blue collar workers?
GARY COHN: So, you’re talking about AI in
MARGARET BRENNAN: AI in general.
GARY COHN: So, look, there’s a big debate going on in the economy today, in business today, and the debate is, is this era different or is this era the same? I’m in the camp that this time is the same, and what I mean by that is, if you look back at all the great technological advances we’ve lived through, even before we went live, we read stories about how this was the end of employment. If you go back to the cotton jean, or the internal combustion engine, or the telephone, or the cell phone or the internet, all these technological inventions should have been the undoing of the human economy. I think what we have found in history is that they are not the extinction of human populations. What happens is the gross domestic product, the GDP of the country grows as it grows, we create more jobs, and I think that is what is happening here, there is another thing that is equally important here. The biggest companies in America have historically been simple companies, and they have always had smart assets. The biggest companies in America today are a combination of asset-based companies and smart companies. Goods need to be created by people.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Gary Cohn, good to have your information. As always, we’ll be right back.
