Lawrence Alan Kudlow (born August 20, 1947) is an American conservative broadcast news analyst, economist, columnist, journalist, political commentator, and radio personality. He is a financial news commentator for Fox Business and served as the director of the National Economic Council during the Trump administration from 2018 to 2021. He assumed that role after his previous employment as a CNBC television financial news host. He is the vice chair of the board of the America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank founded to promote an America First public policy agenda.

Kudlow began his career as a junior financial analyst at the New York Federal Reserve. He soon left government to work on Wall Street at Paine Webber and Bear Stearns as a financial analyst. In 1981, after previously volunteering and working for left-wing politicians and causes, Kudlow joined the administration of Ronald Reagan as associate director for economics and planning in the Office of Management and Budget.

After leaving the Reagan administration during the second term, Kudlow returned to Wall Street and Bear Stearns, serving as the firm's chief economist from 1987 until 1994. During this time, he also advised the gubernatorial campaign of Christine Todd Whitman on economic issues. In the late 1990s, after a publicized battle with cocaine and alcohol addiction, Kudlow left Wall Street to become an economics and financial commentator – first with National Review, and later hosting several shows on CNBC.

Kudlow was born and raised in New Jersey, the son of Ruth (née Grodnick) and Irving Howard Kudlow. His family is Jewish. He attended the Elisabeth Morrow School in Englewood, New Jersey, until the sixth grade. He then attended the Dwight-Englewood School through high school.

He graduated from the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, with a bachelor's degree in history in 1969. According to The New York Times, "While he had no extensive formal training in economics, he had an innate understanding of how markets worked and was comfortable with numbers. And he worked hard to teach himself."

In 1971, Kudlow enrolled in the master's program at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, but he left before completing his degree.

Kudlow began his career as a staff economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He worked in the division of the Fed that handled open market operations.

In 1970, while he was still a Democrat, Kudlow joined Americans for Democratic Action chair Joseph Duffey's "New Politics" senatorial campaign in Connecticut which also attracted an "A-list crowd of young Democrats", including Yale University law student Bill Clinton, John Podesta, and Michael Medved, another future conservative. Duffey was a leading anti-war politician during the Vietnam war era. Duffey's campaign manager called Kudlow a "brilliant organizer". In 1976, he worked on the U.S. Senate campaign of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, along with Tim Russert, against Conservative Party incumbent James L. Buckley, brother of William F. Buckley Jr.