Transcript: IBM vice chairman Gary Cohn on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," Sept. 20, 2026

The following is the transcript of the interview with IBM vice chair Gary Cohn, who served as an economic adviser in President Trump's first term, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on Sept. 20, 2026.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And we're joined now by Gary Cohn. He is the vice chairman at IBM. He previously served as a top economic advisor to President Trump during that first term. Welcome back. It's always good to have you here.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So we have a lot of pressure points right now. One of them is diesel prices at this record high, motor oil jet fuel costs. They're all affecting consumers. And this is not just in America. I mean around the world. The video alone of what's happening with protests in some of these countries in Syria, Philippines, Guatemala, all gas price protests. How concerned are you about the state of the consumer and the global economy?

GARY COHN: Well, Margaret, I think you went through the exact topic that the consumer in the United States is most concerned about, it's energy and energy products. You know, you start with gasoline. The most obvious thing, people go to the pump daily, weekly. And they sit there and they hold the nozzle down and they watch the numbers tick, and they see these numbers are higher than they were last week, and they're higher than the week before. Is this ever going to stop? So directly they see it then indirectly when you talk about diesel, diesel is really the feedstock for food in this country. You know our farmers go through diesel to, to grow their crops, to pick their crops, to deliver their crops. The transportation network is all dependent on diesel. So they see the second hand effects of diesel in the economy as well. So the consumer sentiment has turned quite negative. And then throw on top of that the- the unknowns of AI is really concerning people because they see very high prices. They're unsure about AI, they're unsure about the job market. And so sentiment has become quite negative recently. It's become negative. And yet, you hear Treasury Secretary Bessent and others saying we've got all these positive data points, right, with like, you know, the poverty rate in this country, really at a historic low. This morning, he was posting about that on social media as he's getting ready to meet with the Chinese. He says there's strong foreign demand for U.S. assets. He refutes the idea that investors are balking at treasuries. But there does seem this concern about America's stability in fiscal health.

GARY COHN: You know, we're- we're in a very funny place here. The overall economy is quite stable. So if you look at some of the headline indicators, you look at GDP, you look at employment, you look at consumer spending. The numbers are pretty good. They're pretty good to very good. So what's actually going on in the day to day economy that Secretary Bessent's talking about. He's right. But when you ask consumers about how they feel about the economy and where they think they're going to be in a month from now, a quarter from now, a year from now, then you see this very negative sentiment of all of these issues flowing through.