4 future 'congressional battles' keeping Larry Kudlow 'up at night'

Top White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told FOX Business that he’s more concerned about future Congressional battles than the U.S. economy.

“What keeps me up at night is probably some of the Congressional battles that may be coming,” he said to Stuart Varney on Friday.

President Trump and the Republican Party intended to pass a number of new reforms, including a recently signed deal with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto – called the U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA) — at the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires in November, which still must be approved by Congress.

However, Kudlow is doubtful now that Democrats took control of the House.

“I want very much to see the USMCA deal go through. I would like to see some additional tax reform. I would like to see a lot of spending restraint. I think we can do business on infrastructure,” he said. “So there’s a lot of uncertainties there.”

On Thursday fears over a potential economic slowdown contributed to a highly volatile U.S. stock market this week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite slid back into negative territory for 2018.

But Kudlow said the economy “is in good shape.”

“I know the markets have been volatile,” he said.  “But I don’t think that’s a big problem – 8 percent correction. So let’s see what happens in the policy discussions with our Democratic friends.”

On Friday the Labor Department said that U.S employers added 155,000 jobs in November, falling short of Wall Street analysts’ expectations, and the unemployment rate remained at 3.7 percent -- the lowest in nearly 50 years.

U.S. GDP remained at 3.5 percent in the third quarter.