Former Trump Economic Adviser: The U.S. Economy Can Recover from the Pandemic If Trump Sticks to April 30 Deadline

Former Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore says that the U.S. economy “can get past the novel coronavirus pandemic if President Trump sticks to his April 30 deadline,” as reported by Fox News.

“I think the president has made a smart declaration that we've got a date that we want to try to get the economy up and running again, at least in certain places of the country,” Moore said. “Certainly New York City is going to be shut down for a while … But there are parts of the country that really are fairly unaffected by this, and it doesn't make sense to have a universal standard for the whole country.”

On Sunday, President Trump announced that the White House would extend the social distancing guidelines until April 30th.

According to Moore, it is possible to have both a functioning economy and effective public health measures. However, he worries “that when you start talking about May, June, July, the economic damage cascades at a very fast pace.”

If the U.S. economy remains at a standstill during the summer months, millions of small businesses may fail, and unemployment could reach 30 million, as Moore believes.

“We've never seen that any other time in this country's history,” he said.

Fox News added that Moore “also noted that he spoke to an executive from an airline who explained that even if the economy started to open up in May, the carrier wouldn’t expect to have full flights by any time in late fall.”