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In September of last year, the White House National Security Council, together with Trump’s then economic adviser, the Swede Tomas Philipson, wrote a relationship who warned of the consequences of a pandemic. It is estimated that a pandemic could kill more than half a million Americans and cost the American economy several billion dollars.
-It is an incredibly strange context, we had no idea that the coronavirus would begin to spread in the world three months later, says Tomas Philipson when Ekonomibyrån calls him by video call.
According to a newspaper article The New York Times In March, however, the report remained a desktop product and Tomas Philipson himself publicly underestimated the costs of the pandemic to the US economy.
“Very fast”
That image is not shared by Tomas Philipson. He believes that several of the tips and recommendations Philipson participated in the development in 2019 have become part of Corona’s fight.
-In general, it usually takes at least a decade to develop a vaccine against a new virus, but now the United States is about to achieve it in ten months. It’s dramatically fast, says Philipson.
Tomas Philipson was born and raised in Sweden, studied mathematics at Uppsala University, and moved to the United States to study American collage, and stayed behind. Until the end of June this year, Tomas Philipson served as President of Trump’s Economic Council in the White House.
It has been fun working with the president
“I managed many times to persuade him to follow the line that we proposed in the Economic Council and he was very receptive to economic arguments,” says Philipson.
He finished his White House advisory assignment earlier than expected. According to the American business newspaper Wall street journal he was outmaneuvered, but he himself says he left his post because he fell ill with Corona.
-Working with the president was fun! I think it was a very productive relationship that I had with Trump until I left, he says.
See the full Ekonomibyrån on SVT Play here.
