CNBC analyst Larry Kudlow is heading to the White House as President Donald Trump’s new chief economic adviser, but his boss from the Reagan administration isn’t optimistic.

“I’d say congratulations to Larry, but unfortunately, that’s about as far as it goes,” David Stockman, who ran the White House Office of Budget and Management under President Ronald Reagan and acted as Kudlow’s former boss, told CNBC Tuesday.

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“He’s walking into what I think is an impossible mission,” the former OMB director said. “It’s heads, Trump wins, tails, Larry loses.”

Trump, Stockman said, “is an incorrigible, life-long, rabid protectionist.”

“It’s primitive, he’s never changed his mind, and he’s not going to listen to anyone on these issues,” he continued. “Including Larry.”

Though Stockman said he’s glad Kudlow is taking the job, the expectation that he would make any changes within the Trump White House is “a delusion.”

The president’s mind is “frozen in a 17th century mercantilist time warp, and nobody is going to have any influence in terms of pushing that ahead.”

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Kudlow’s former boss went on to charge him with being an “brilliant data miner” who will find statistics to sate the president’s desire to wait out the “roaring” national deficit.

“He’s going to help Trump sleepwalk into a tremendous fiscal collision coming in the next few months, unfortunately,” Stockman said.

Watch below, via CNBC:

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