Rama Krishna Sangem
Kush Desai, US born Indian immigrants child, is the biggest defender of President Donald Trump’s ever rising tariffs on world countries. As Deputy Press Secretary of White House, Desai is not just acting as an explainer of the tariffs, but also a great admirer of Trump – even for his frequent flip-flops on the rates and the deadlines. Desai reports to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
American media is agog with how Desai boasts of Trump’s negotiating skills often forcing the foreign countries to come to terms with the US tariff demands. Even as the US economists and policy experts are worried over the possible impact of high tariffs on imports on the local consumers, Desai argues that there won’t be any impact on the prices.
According to the Budget Lab’s analysis of Trump’s tariffs, prices would rise by more than 2%. Tedeschi said that could lead to an almost 4% drop in purchasing power of lower-income families, costing them about $1,500 annually.
Kush Desai was born to an Indian immigrant family and attended high school in Nutley, New Jersey. He later graduated from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, with his Bachelor of Arts degree in 2017. While at Dartmouth, he was awarded the James O. Freedman Presidential Research Scholarship.
Desai began his career as a reporter for The Daily Caller in Washington, D.C., from July 2017 to March 2018. Before becoming Deputy Press Secretary, he served as Deputy Battleground States and Pennsylvania Communications Director at the RNC (July 2024), and Deputy Communications Director for the 2024 Republican National Convention.
Communications in charge of Republicans
From December 2022 to January 2024, Desai was Communications Director for the Republican Party of Iowa; this capped a more than 4-year tenure at the RNC, where he rose from Research Analyst, to Director of Vetting, and eventually to this communications role.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai told NPR that “The Administration has consistently maintained that the cost of tariffs will not be borne by American consumers, but by foreign exporters who rely on access to the American economy, the world’s biggest and best consumer market.” Desai also pointed to a July analysis from the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers which found that the prices of imported goods have fallen this year, even as tariffs have been in effect.
“President Trump’s agenda of deregulation, tariffs, energy abundance, and tax cuts led to the first decline in wealth inequality in decades during his first term, and this same agenda is going to again unleash a historic economy for working class Americans during his second term,” Desai said.
Ernie Tedeschi, the director of economics at the Budget Lab at Yale — a nonpartisan research policy center that analyzes federal economic policy, spoke to Morning Edition about why low income households are more likely to feel the pinch of tariffs. Tedeschi also served as chief economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers under Joe Biden. Desai’s narratives would be closely watched by all and if the tariffs affect the prices in the US, naturally he will have to take the blame.
