Former White House chief economic advisor Gary Cohn said Sunday that President Donald Trump's tariffs hurt the U.S. economy and undermined the stimulative impact of the administration's massive tax cut passed in 2017.

Cohn, in an interview with CBS' Face The Nation, said Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs "collided" with his tax policy by undermining a provision that allowed companies to write off their capital expenditures.

"I think it's totally hurt the United States," Cohn said, referencing the tariffs. "[...]We're missing a big component. We're missing the capital expenditures from companies in the United States."



Companies buy steel and aluminum to build factories and equipment, but the metal tariffs increased input costs and diminished the benefits of writing off these capital expenditures under the tax law, Cohn said.



"So all of the sudden, the advantages that we were trying to give companies to help stimulate the economy, to build facilities, to go out and hire people, to drive wages, we took away that advantage by taxing the input that they needed to build," Cohn told CBS.

The former Goldman Sachs president played an instrumental role in formulating Trump's tax policy, but he clashed with protectionists in the administration on the issue of tariffs. He also criticized the White House over Trump's response to a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in which a civil rights activist was killed in 2017.



Cohn resigned from the administration in March of 2018.