How will the government maintain and even speed up the 3.1% real GDP growth that the U.S. saw in 2018?

The answer - at least according to Kevin Hassett - is deregulation.

The Chairman of President Trump's Council of Economic Advisers joined "The Final Round" on Yahoo Finance Thursday and pointed to cutting red tape as the way that that the economy will continue to grow even as the effects from the 2017 tax cuts wear off.

"I expect that the tax cut part is going to continue to give" he said. “Don't forget that President Trump's deregulation agenda can happen without Congress intervening. Basically, we just go thing by thing and make it smart and if we do that, that really improves business sentiment."

Chairman Hassett pointed to one department in particular saying "there are a lot of regulations especially, say, at the Labor Department that people have been studying and thinking about how to revise to improve the business climate."

Council of Economic Advisers has previously cited research by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University which claims to have found that "economic growth has been dampened by approximately 0.8 percent per annum since 1980" due to regulations.

Mr. Hassett says that his group's model shows GDP growth actually increasing in 2019 even against headwinds from the lingering effects of the government shutdown and a weakening global economy.

"The model that told us 3.1 way back in the day, even before the tax cuts were passed, says this year is going to be 3.2" he said.

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Ben Werschkul is the Washington, DC producer for Yahoo Finance.

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