Jared Bernstein (Courtesy photo)

Over the last couple of decades, few if any American economists have played a more prominent role in the national debate over the economy or in actually crafting economic policy than Jared Bernstein. Bernstein served as chair of the national Council of Economic Advisers under President Biden and is currently a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a Distinguished Policy Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

And recently Bernstein was kind enough to join NC Newsline for a conversation about the current state of the U.S. economy and, among many other things, how the ongoing rise in inflation combined with growth in unemployment signals the arrival of the dreaded phenomenon known as stagflation, and how President Trump’s chaotic policies – most notably the imposition of tariffs on imported goods and services – are fueling what could well be a very destructive and hard-to-reverse economic trend.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Jared Bernstein, the former chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

This is a rebroadcast of our interview that originally aired September 21, 2025.