It leaves Mr. Trump surrounded primarily by advisers with strong protectionist views who advocate the types of aggressive trade measures, like tariffs, that Mr. Trump campaigned on but that Mr. Cohn fought inside the White House. Mr. Cohn was viewed by Republican lawmakers as the steady hand who could prevent Mr. Trump from engaging in activities that could trigger a trade war.
Even the mere threat, last August, that Mr. Cohn might leave sent the financial markets tumbling. On Tuesday, Mr. Cohn’s announcement rattled markets, and trading in futures pointed to a decline in the United States stock market when it opened on Wednesday.
In a statement, Mr. Cohn said he had been pleased to work on “pro-growth economic policies to benefit the American people, in particular the passage of historic tax reform.” White House officials said that Mr. Cohn was leaving on cordial terms with the president and that they planned to discuss policy even after his departure.
Mr. Cohn’s departure comes as the White House has been buffeted by turnover, uncertainty and internal divisions and as the president lashes out at the special counsel investigation that seems to be bearing down on his team.
A host of top aides have been streaming out the White House door or are considering a departure. Rob Porter, the White House staff secretary and a member of the inner circle, resigned after spousal abuse allegations. Hope Hicks, the president’s communications director and confidante, announced that she would leave soon. In recent days, the president has lost a speechwriter, an associate attorney general and the North Korea negotiator.
Others are perpetually seen as on the way out. John F. Kelly, the chief of staff, at one point broached resigning over the handling of Mr. Porter’s case. Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser, has been reported to be preparing to leave. And many officials wonder if Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, will stay now that he has lost his top-secret security clearance; the departure of Mr. Cohn further shrinks the number of allies Mr. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, have in the White House.
More than one in three top White House officials left by the end of Mr. Trump’s first year and fewer than half of the 12 positions closest to the president are still occupied by the same people as when he came into office, according to a Brookings Institution study.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
Mr. Cohn’s departure will bring the turnover number to 43 percent, according to updated figures compiled by Kathryn Dunn Tenpas of the Brookings Institution.
For all the swings of the West Wing revolving door over the last year, Mr. Cohn’s decision to leave struck a different chord for people. He is among the most senior officials to resign to date.
Mr. Trump’s announcement last week that he would levy tariffs on aluminum and steel imports was the most immediate catalyst for Mr. Cohn’s departure, according to people familiar with his thinking. A longtime proponent of free trade, Mr. Cohn believed the decision could jeopardize economic growth. The president, urged to consider the risks of losing Mr. Cohn by several advisers, appeared unconcerned, insisting that he could live without his economic adviser as he makes a more aggressive return to the nationalist policies that helped sweep him into office as the 2018 midterm elections approach.
Mr. Cohn was familiar with Mr. Trump’s nationalist stance on trade, and the president repeatedly asked aides, “Where are my steel tariffs?” over the last eight months. Since last summer, a process for debate and information flow to the president had been in place as he made decisions. But that process has been in tatters since Mr. Porter left the White House, several aides said on Tuesday.
What’s more, people close to the president said, Mr. Cohn had harmed his own ability to negotiate by telling Mr. Kelly last week that if the tariffs went forward, he might have to resign. The president was told by Cohn critics that Mr. Cohn had made the issue about himself, as opposed to Mr. Trump’s policies. That led to Mr. Trump souring on Mr. Cohn by the time his resignation was submitted on Tuesday. But the president was still infuriated by Mr. Cohn’s decision, according to multiple people who discussed it with the president after it was announced. In several conversations that Mr. Trump had with people on Tuesday, he denounced Mr. Cohn as a “globalist.”
Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.
The resignation followed conversations Mr. Cohn held with the president in recent weeks about the possibility of replacing Mr. Kelly as chief of staff, said people who were briefed on the matter. The president never formally offered Mr. Cohn the job, those people insisted, but Mr. Trump had discussions with him about whether he would be interested.
On Tuesday, before Mr. Cohn’s announcement, Mr. Trump dismissed talk of chaos in his White House while acknowledging that he deliberately fostered a fractious atmosphere. “I like conflict,” he said at a news conference with the visiting prime minister of Sweden. “I like having two people with different points of view. And I certainly have that. And then I make a decision. But I like watching it. I like seeing it. And I think it’s the best way to go.”
But he insisted that he had no trouble recruiting or retaining people to work for him, despite widespread reluctance among Republicans to join his staff.
“Believe me, everybody wants to work in the White House,” he said. “They all want a piece of the Oval Office. They want a piece of the West Wing.”
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
People close to Mr. Cohn said that he had planned to stay for roughly a year, and that he had accomplished a number of things he cared about, including the $1.5 trillion tax cut.
A onetime silver trader who eventually became the president of Goldman Sachs, Mr. Cohn was an unlikely addition to the administration. A lifelong Democrat known for having progressive social views, he had no political expertise and barely knew Mr. Trump. But during an unconventional job interview, Mr. Trump was impressed with Mr. Cohn’s knowledge of economics and the markets, say people who were briefed on the discussion.
As his chief economic adviser, Mr. Cohn quickly ingratiated himself to the president. He gave blunt, practical advice, say people familiar with their interactions, and built a team of experts on issues like infrastructure and taxes. At one point, he was part of a moderate-minded coalition of staff members — including Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump, also an adviser — who pushed for the preservation of workplace rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. He also pushed Mr. Trump to remain in the Paris climate accord, a battle he ultimately lost.
He argued frequently over Mr. Trump’s “America First” approach to trade, jousting most recently with the White House aide Peter Navarro and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross over the harm he believed nationalist economic policies would generate.
Shortly after his inauguration, Mr. Trump withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an Obama-era trade agreement with a number of Asian nations. Then, on at least three occasions last year, Mr. Cohn rebuffed Mr. Navarro’s attempts to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement. Mr. Cohn was also part of a group of White House aides who effectively blocked the metal tariffs on several occasions.
Some of Mr. Cohn’s struggles on the job were painfully public. During an interview with CNBC, he once described working for Mr. Trump as a “dream come true.” Yet as the top economic adviser to a president who is often contradictory on matters of policy, he sometimes had to finesse Mr. Trump’s errors, a role that critics regarded as damaging to Mr. Cohn’s reputation.
Mr. Cohn’s rapport with Mr. Trump has been tenuous at times.
In August, after violent nationalist protests in Charlottesville, Va., that led to a woman’s death, Mr. Cohn was so troubled by the president’s response that he wrote a resignation letter, according to people briefed on the document. That time, Mr. Trump persuaded him to stay. But, loath to hide his feelings on the matter, he publicly criticized his boss, saying in a Financial Times interview that the administration “can and must do better” to condemn hate groups.
Late last year, Mr. Navarro was placed under Mr. Cohn’s supervision and asked to copy him on emails, effectively neutering his effect on policy for a time. But a tumultuous period in the White House in February resulted in Mr. Navarro’s re-ascendance, and with that, his protectionist policy agenda.
Mr. Cohn, who officials said has not set a firm departure date, will probably take a month or so to regroup after leaving, according to someone familiar with his thinking. Possibilities he has considered for a next step, said this person, include opening up his own investment firm or, according to two people familiar with his thinking, a more senior job in the Trump administration.
At a meeting with steel and aluminum executives last Thursday where Trump announced the move, Cohn argued against it, warning about price increases for steel and aluminum products, according to a person in the room.
An Axios reporter Thursday reported via Twitter that last Thursday Trump canceled a meeting that Cohn arranged for him with companies that use steel and aluminum in their products, in an effort to dissuade the president from imposing the tariffs.
However, White House officials told CNBC earlier Tuesday that if Cohn were to resign it would not be only due to the president's decision on tariffs.
Market watchers saw Cohn's potential departure as a bad omen for the White House's economic policy. He helped to shepherd massive tax cuts, the Trump administration's only major legislative achievement, which the president signed into law in December.
Cohn also faced pressure to step down following Trump's defiant response to violence at a white nationalist rally in August. In an FT interview published that month, Cohn said he faced pressure both to leave Trump's White House and to stay in it. He even drafted a resignation letter, according to The New York Times.
The economic advisor told the FT that the White House "must do better" following Trump's widely criticized response to violence at the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The interview may not have helped his case with the president.
The president's chaotic Trump Tower press conference in which Trump appeared to equate torch-bearing white nationalists with the protesters who demonstrated against them also fueled the possibility of Cohn, who is Jewish, resigning. "Not all" the people participating in the rally were bad, the president told reporters three days after a counterprotester was killed in a car ramming, allegedly by a suspected white supremacist.
"Citizens standing up for equality and freedom can never be equated with white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the K.K.K.," Cohn told the FT. "I believe this administration can and must do better in consistently and unequivocally condemning these groups and do everything we can to heal the deep divisions that exist in our communities."
Cohn was Goldman's no. 2 executive when Trump named him as his top economic advisor. Trump offered the former Goldman Sachs president the key economic post on Dec. 9, despite bashing the firm during the 2016 campaign. Cohn also had been seen as a possible chairman of the Federal Reserve.
CNBC's Eamon Javers contributed to this report.
