Trump's top economic adviser Larry Kudlow suffers 'very mild' heart attack

WASHINGTON,

US President Donald Trump's top economic advisory Larry Kudlow has suffered a "very mild" heart attack and is being treated at a military hospital just outside Washington, the president and the White House said late Monday.

The heart attack comes just days after Kudlow raised eyebrows by claiming Justin Trudeau "stabbed us in the back" after a G7 summit hosted by the Canadian leader ended in acrimony.

'VERY MILD'

"Our Great Larry Kudlow, who has been working so hard on trade and the economy, has just suffered a heart attack. He is now in Walter Reed Medical Center," Trump wrote on Twitter, just minutes before a historic summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

In a subsequent statement, the White House described the event as a "very mild" heart attack.

"Larry is currently in good condition at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and his doctors expect he will make a full and speedy recovery," spokeswoman Sarah Sanders added.

A longtime TV personality, Kudlow, 70, succeeded former Goldman Sachs president Gary Cohn, who quit Trump's team in March in protest at the decision to impose steep US tariffs on imported steel and aluminum.

As a commentator, Kudlow had strongly backed Trump's moves to cut taxes and reduce business regulations but was openly critical toward the president's tariffs moves.

But since joining the Trump administration, he has faithfully executed his boss's agenda — arguing for instance that the European Union must make "concessions" if it wishes to be exempt from tariffs, and signaling the US is prepared to walk away from the two-decade-old North American Free Trade Agreement.

HISTORIAN

Kudlow on Sunday said Justin Trudeau "stabbed us in the back" at a G7 summit after the Canadian leader said Trump invoking national security to justify US tariffs was "kind of insulting" to Canadian veterans.

Kudlow was appointed in April to head the National Economic Council, a policy body created in 1993 that includes senior officials and experts.

A trained economist and historian, he nevertheless represented a departure from the scholarly types normally chosen to lead the body.

He is better known as a TV pundit with bullish pro-trade ways and a comical manner during his 25 years with business network CNBC.

In 2007, just as the US housing bubble was about to burst, he reassured his audience that there would be no recession in the United States.

In the 1980s, he served as White House budget director under president Ronald Reagan and is still a champion of that era's conservative, supply-side economics, which calls for cutting taxes to boost growth — an ideology the Trump administration has emphatically embraced.