Diana Furchtgott-Roth


Diana Furchtgott-Roth is an economist who currently serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology at the United States Department of Transportation. She previously served as Acting Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Before joining the Trump Administration, Furchtgott-Roth served as a senior fellow and director of Economics21 at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and as an adjunct professor of economics at George Washington University. She has been nominated by President Donald Trump to become Assistant Secretary of Transportation for Research and Technology. Furchtgott-Roth was previously the chief economist of the United States Department of Labor, chief of staff of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, deputy executive director of the United States Domestic Policy Council, and junior staff economist at the Council of Economic Advisers. A former columnist for MarketWatch and Tax Notes, she has authored several books.

Education and career

Diana Roth was born to Ellen and Gabriel Roth in England in 1958. Her family moved to America in 1967. Her father was an economist at the World Bank. They lived in Chevy Chase, Maryland. After receiving a B.A. from Swarthmore College, Roth returned to England and earned a M.Phil. in economics at Oxford University.
Furchtgott-Roth was an economist on the staff of President Ronald Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers in 1986–87. From 1991–93, she was deputy executive director of the White House Domestic Policy Council and associate director of the State Department's Office of Policy Planning under President George H. W. Bush. From 1993 to 2001, she was a resident fellow and assistant to the president at the American Enterprise Institute. In 2001–02, Furchtgott-Roth was the chief of staff of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, and from 2003 to 2005, she was chief economist at the United States Department of Labor. From 2005 to 2011, she was a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. Furchtgott-Roth is currently a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and director of Economics21. Her book Disinherited: How Washington Is Betraying America's Young, coauthored with Jared Meyer, received the 2016 Sir Antony Fisher International Memorial Award.

Views

She is an advocate of lower taxes and less burdensome regulations in order to increase economic growth. She has proposed putting longshore unions and employers under the Railway Labor Act instead of the National Labor Relations Act, and argues that raising the minimum wage would do more harm than good because it would deprive low-skill workers and teens of jobs.

Personal life

As of 2016, she and her husband Harold had six children and two grandchildren.