Scott Bessent
Appearances
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
I think the American dream is what it's always been. But after World War II, I think 90% of American families The children made more than the parents. Now I think it's 50-50. But it's to own a home. It's financial security. It's to some level of comfort. It's purpose in your work. It's to be able to support your family, to be able to have choices, to not have to work two jobs.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
I made a remark at the Economic Club of New York. last week, two weeks ago, and Mike Pence decided he was going to troll me, because I said the American dream is not built on cheap goods. And he said, well, yes, it is. And I just say, with Vice President Pence, this let them eat flat screens economic policy that doesn't isn't what people want. They don't want the baubles from China.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
It's like the old... They want progression.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Well, I think a lot of it's scarcity. Because what you're talking about is like out in San Francisco, super tight zoning laws. So there's scarcity for homes. If you think like Ivy League education, all of a sudden you gave all these people access to Ivy League education. You
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
brought in international students, but the number of degrees awarded at Harvard, Yale, Princeton probably hasn't changed very much since the 1950s. So you created just this demand for scarce things, which leads to this anxiety. But you also created, I think, a sense of hopelessness.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
No, look, they're subject to big revisions over time. And I thought one of the big mistakes the Biden administration made, and thank goodness they made it, was they refused to vote. They went with the numbers, not what the American people were feeling. They said, No, it's a vibe session and you really don't understand how good you have it. This has happened, this has happened. When in reality,
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
I was on Meet the Press yesterday, and there was something that said, well, the American people don't believe Donald Trump's doing enough on the economy. And I told the host, I said, you know, the one thing I'm not going to answer is that they don't know what they're talking about. I have to have respect for how they feel, and then we need to go back and look at what is causing this anxiety.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
So that's what we're going to do.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Well, look, I think we're trying to do three things. And I think you may have talked about it last week, week before.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
The three legs on the stool. And from the outside, you intuited that very well. I would do just a little refinement on that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
But you were adjacent to everything. So on one, We are trying to bring down this massive federal debt, cut the spending, but in a controlled way. You can't do it all at once. I don't like to repeat private conversations with the president, but I'll repeat this one because I think it's very important. it really illustrates where his head was at.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
First time I went in to see him, saw him at Mar-a-Lago, and walk in the door, he said, Scott, how are we gonna get these debt and deficits down without causing a recession? And that's exactly where we are now. How are we gonna get the debt and deficits down, not cause a recession? And I said, sir, when you win, you didn't get us here,
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
going to set a goal by 2028 we want to get back to the long-term average we're going to deflate it slowly and long-term average being about three percent deficit to g3 three and a half percent deficit to gdp and you know like i keep saying the us we don't have a revenue problem we have a spending problem because we are averaging right about 18 revenue and i'm talking about federal government federal government only
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
We're at about 18%. And Biden administration blew it out, blew the spending out to 25. Normally, it's about 21, 21 and a half. We have the 2% inflation, nominal GDP, real GDP is 1.8. So we get nominal GDP 3.8%. it all works out. I had one of the heads of one of the Singapore sovereign wealth funds here last week. Guess what Singapore spends in terms of spending the GDP?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
18%. And he said, you know, He said, we have a lot in common with the Trump administration. We like small government. We don't like illegal immigration. And we like personal safety, which I thought was very interesting.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
With this Republican Congress, I'm not sure what a deficit hawk is, but I think I would qualify as one. A lot of the Republicans, I actually have to coax them. You can't do this all at once. I was with one of the Congressional Budget Committees two weeks ago, and they really want to cut this fast. And I said, you do realize every $300 billion we cut is about a percent of GDP.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
So we are trying to land the plane well, and The plan, because that's really what I'd like to talk about today. I think there's three plans here. But plan one, we're going to de-lever the government via the spending. We are also going to shed excess labor from the government. So on that side. And then on the other side, we're going to deregulate the financial system.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
The regulated financial system's really been what I call a regulatory corset. for a long time, and as we deregulate that, then the private sector can re-leverage, so government de-leveraging, private sector re-leveraging, and the employment, or the folks who lost their government jobs will be picked up by the private sector.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Good, gentlemen, thanks for having me.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Yeah, and the... So part of fixing the affordability crisis is, we can come back and talk about it if you want, but where can we get prices down? Eggs are easier, but the other side of getting prices down is getting real wages up. So on getting real wages for working people up, it goes back to the Main Street versus Wall Street.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
And the second plan is to reorder the international trading system and bring manufacturing jobs back to the US and reinvigorate the middle class. Because again- Through tariffs. Well, to use tariffs where needed to bring other countries into line.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Well, so... There's tariffs. Then I think there's three other things we can do, which are the centerpiece of the administration. We can have the low and predictable taxes. We can substantially slash regulations, because regulations are the equivalent of- That'll drive investment dollars, private investment dollars. And predictability in regulations. And then cheap energy.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Yes. But You've got to have, I've been in this building, I think this is my seventh week, President Trump, been back at the White House for eight weeks, so you actually do need time. So a lot of people who weren't happy about the CR, but shutting down the government wouldn't have been productive, either politically or economically.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Well, I don't know where finance in particular came from. As you mentioned, my dad was a real estate developer and he was kind of boom, bust kind of guy. So I think that's where my passion for risk management came from. But I was very fortunate. Went to Yale, wasn't sure what I wanted to do.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Well, tax cuts will, so tax cuts and deregulation will change the growth trajectory.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Will grow GDP. If trend line has been 1.8, if you can move the growth to three or above, then you really change their trajectory. And if you can keep expenses flat or do the unthinkable and cut expenses, then you can really. So this is important.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
That's kind of the theory. And I'll tell you, shame on me. I was in the investment business 35 years. I talked very confidently that CBO scoring says this. And it turns out I didn't know you know what about CBO scoring. When you're on this side of the wall, you realize how crazy it is.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
It's very gameable. And one of the most gameable parts of it is in normal CBO scoring, that, so we're calling, we're saying that we want to renew the tax cuts.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
We're actually just renewing the current tax regime.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
That somehow after they expire, then they go back to the old rate. Spending never changes. Spending never has to get renewed. And I think when I look and think about a mental model and how do systems work, how do they break down, one of the things that has caused this spending bulge is this idea that you never had to rescore spending.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Yeah. I mean, it's OPM. It's other people's money. But Danny DeVito had that movie. But you would regard that as being a good politician. Right. Like you brought home the bacon for for your district.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
That because. The CR, a lot of people didn't like it, but one of the things that a lot of people didn't like, there were no earmarks in it. How dare they? Totally.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
So we are re-examining all the bank regulations. And why are they there? Why do banks have to, I can't remember, it's five or seven percent to hold treasury bills. What are the regulations? Why do, I had a whole group of community bankers or small banks here last week, and why do they have to hold the same amount of capital
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
1980, when I got there, probably you all can't imagine this, but there used to be these things called punch cards. And the Yale computer system had just gone from punch cards to screens. I was thinking of being a computer science major, maybe a journalist, because people actually used to read newspapers. So punch cards and newspapers from the Wayback Machine. And I got an internship
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
that JP Morgan and Wells Fargo and Citi hold when they don't have the complexity, they don't have, why do the regulators, one of these small bankers said, well, Bank of America does it this way. Bank of America has a trillion dollars in deposits. This was $183 million bank.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
But I know you all talk about incentives a lot. Back to incentives. What's a regulator's incentive just to keep tightening the corset? They don't care about growth. They don't care about the common sense.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Well, it doesn't have to be rates, but if we do all the things I was just talking about, if we deregulate, if we have cheap energy, if we shed excess labor from the government, if we get government spending down, then rates, inflation should come down, rates should come down. But on the question of how are we going to measure it, I don't have any problem with private credit.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
I actually think it's exciting. It's dynamic.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
And the strength of the US financial system is the depth and now the breadth. But you could see that what's happened that so much lending is being pushed outside the regulated banking system, that tells you it's over-regulated. Right, yeah. So now, once we, so one test will be, how has bank lending, especially small regional, small banks, community banks, that come and go, and these small banks,
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
that small banks and community banks, they're 70% of ag loans, they're 40% of small business loans. And that's one of the reasons Main Street's been stifled.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Well, the Fed, I 100% support the Fed's autonomy in monetary policy. I don't agree with it all the time. Right. it is it's how it is it's how it is and um so and and i said i won't comment on perspective policy i can talk about their mistakes in the past which have been numerous but i i think like like with like with it with any system as it expands beyond sort of the core uh i i actually think
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
that some of the things they've done in regulation, some of the things they've done in climate and DEI, some of the things, maybe even non-standard monetary policy, threatens their independence. And I want them to stay strong, robust, and independent on monetary policy. On regulation, I think that they have They have been much too harsh on especially the smaller banks, medium banks.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
So there's three main bank regulators. There's the Fed, Office of Control of the Currency, OCC, and the FDIC. And then they're... other regulators, the SEC, CFTC, but the banking regulators at the federal level are those three. Here at Treasury, we have something called FSOC, Financial Stability Oversight Council, and I chair that. And via that, the President's Working Group
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
which is another convening mechanism that I plan to just keep pushing for safe, sound, and smart deregulation. Why are we doing this? Why are we doing that? Again, that there's a capital charge to banks for buying treasury bills. So I actually think there's a chance that if we take, it's called the supplementary leverage ratio. If we take that away, it becomes a binding constraint on banks.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
just for an individual and he taught me the investment business really well and I And who is that? His name is Jim Rogers. He's famous. He was George Soros' first partner. He had just completed an around-the-world motorcycle trip and written a book called Investment Biker and a fascinating guy and I
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
We might actually pull treasury bill yields down by 30 to 70 basis points. Every basis point is a billion dollars a year.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Yeah, look, I thought that when rates were low, you're supposed to turn out rates.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
And instead, the Treasury for the past few years has pulled rates in. And I think part of that was to keep rates lower, that they changed the issuance schedule when rates moved back up towards 5%. have maintained that policy, but I'm maintaining it because, back to David's question, when are we gonna see the results from getting the government spending under control?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
And I don't think the markets recognize it yet.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Yeah. The central value tendency, you're right. The central value tendency, what's the center of it? Because the range of outcomes is so broad. And we know there's a problem there. We know there's waste, fraud, and abuse. quantify it. So I think as we are more able to quantify it, we will get credit for it.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Yeah, I think there are a lot of headlines, especially after the CR, about the Democrats being in disarray. And media likes to write about disarray. I think the untold story here is Republicans have, for a change, actually been very disciplined. And I think a lot of that...
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
president trump is kind of shepherding the party shepherding the movement because imagine he said oh that mike johnson will never get reconciliation instructions out of he's got such a slim majority well he did it he did it yeah that he'll never be able to pass a clean CR. He did it. He did it. So let's see what happens with the budget. So we need Congress to be our partners on the budget.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
They're very engaged, the House and the Senate, that everybody recognizes that if we don't get this done, it's going to be the biggest, it's pass-fail. It's the biggest tax hike in history.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Well, Doge... That's the cost cutting. And it's the first time we've really ever had business people looking at it. This Clinton-Gore commission that we hear a lot about, I think it was a bunch of business school professors. But here you've got real CEOs.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
did the investment business and i thought this is really what i like because it's quantitative so i have to use my quantitative skills but you're also constructing a narrative and it's also like human emotions and you were trading equities bonds everything currencies uh well i started out with equities yeah and i i did that for several years and then i actually ended up
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Well, it's that. And we had this crypto council meeting the other day, and I was sitting and looking. It was myself, Secretary Letnick, and Kelly Loeffler. Everybody was a market person. Like, forget business. But with Doge, that I am completely... aligned with what Elon's doing. And everyone says, well, do you have to do it so fast? Do you have to do it?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Like I said, I've only been in this business for seven weeks. I've only been in D.C. for eight weeks. The thing I can tell you is if you don't move fast, the vested interest will weigh you down. the quicksand will come up or... The claws get set. Everybody's got lobbyists, everybody's got... I mean, think about it. Within a 10-mile radius of here, 25% of the GDP of the U.S.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
pulsates through here every day. And everybody wants to just skim a little. I said to Elon, we were in a meeting, and I said, you know, people are mad at you because you're moving their cheese. And he goes, it's not their cheese. It's the American people's cheese. 100%.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Yeah, and I'd say there are a couple of things, too. One, everyone's hearing cuts, and they think their government services are going to get cut. That's right.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
And they're not. I keep saying it's the Department of Government Efficiency, not government extinction, not government elimination.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Can we make it run much better with fewer people with fewer costs? And I don't want to demonize any of these federal employees. They tell you in this building, I've been so impressed with the quality of the people. I would have hired them in my private firm. They are great public servants. I need you to stay for the weekend. I need a 25 page memo in 72 hours that super high quality.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
I actually think what When all this is done, there will have been two big savings. One will have been on these contractors.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
It was in the newspaper, so we can say it. It's Booz Allen. Exactly.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
It's shocking. What kind of risk management is that, by the way? Yeah. But it tells you that... That they didn't manage the risk. That's right. Tells you how entrenched they believe they were.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
And how good it is. You're absolutely right. And the way the grift works, you can only have six-month contracts, but there are people who have had 40 six-month contracts. Incredible. They've been in situ for 20 years. Incredible. And it's this whole...
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
at Soros Fund Management, worked for a fellow who's my mentor, Stan Druckenmiller, who's incredible. I think he's on, he's more than 40 years now, never a down year. When you're sitting next to him, what am I doing all day?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
And the American people can see if they want it.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Well, I... I think that now that the cat's out of the bag, that the American people are not gonna stay with this, is that maybe, again, here, maybe in the Northeast Corridor, there's some pushback. But when I've seen the polling data, and the rest of the country does not want this to stop, and this administration is not going to stop.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
The courts, they're trying to throw sand in the gears with the courts, and how some judge can say, oh, all these workers have to come back in. But I also think We've moved really quickly.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Now, I think when we start putting out some of the anecdotes and the messages and talk about what's happening, I'll talk about it, I'll be talking about it soon, but there's one very large department that everybody deals with on April 15th that Their help desk is fully staffed 24-7, 365 days a year. They have the same number of people on Christmas Eve as they have on April 14th.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Look, I'd be the ultimate chump if I said, oh, we're going to cut spending, but I also cut revenues. With the IRS, which Treasury controls, my three goals are very simple. Revenue enhancement, privacy, and customer service. Totally.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
People that- Not almost. We had a big announcement on Tuesday, and we brought in the two Hunter Biden whistleblowers who have a lot to say about who gets audited, who doesn't. They're going to be sitting in this building, working on IRS matters, and understanding exactly how these audits get triggered, how these political witch hunts happen, and trying to... change the ethos of the building.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
And again, 99% of the people at the IRS are good people. It's just like all these other agencies where they're bad folks.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Yes, well, but he is the best at changing his mind of anyone I've ever seen.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
1971, and with 15, 16 trillion that we'd have. I don't know what the numbers are since W. tried it. They'd be substantial. We wouldn't be...
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Thinking about a problem in a few years, but I think now you got to play the hand you're dealt I think we are dealt with Social Security Hand and I think maybe we could re-engineer it if we could create the sovereign wealth fund and have that on the other side There are a lot of philanthropists who are looking at baby bonds. So if you can create a some kind of a
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
an investment account for newborns, then that would run on a parallel track to Social Security. So that would be compounding. The other thing would be a safety net.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Well, he has several. And I'm trying to get him to write a book because he has so many of these great things. Maybe you all could press him. But invest, investigate. It takes courage to be a pig. Right. And then I was hooked on markets because, again, it was quantitative. It was qualitative. And it's real time. You get real time feedback all the time. And you're
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
I am, and I'm excited by the idea. This is President Trump. Everything he does isn't in a straight line, but I guarantee you, he has a destination in mind. And the idea that he's going to be the first president in generations...
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
who is going to he wants to create assets for the american people not just debt yeah so he wants to take the debt down and then this idea of assets there's a lot of talk about this economic deal we're going to do with ukraine that would have gone in the sovereign wealth fund right yeah government has big stake in fannie mae and freddie mac yeah
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Where does that go? As you mentioned, Doug Burgum did great work when he was governor of North Dakota. North Dakota has the equivalent of two state sovereign wealth right and for Are they seven eight nine hundred thousand people, right? I think they had twenty five billion dollars, right and Alaska Alaska permanent they'll ask a permanent but all that's from the natural resource money going in.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Yeah, so to the extent we start The other day when the sovereign wealth fund was announced, President Trump surprised me in the Oval and said, could you make a few remarks? And I said, well, we're going to mobilize the asset side of the balance sheet. And all the gold books said he's going to revalue the gold. I can say today we're not revaluing the gold.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
But what we are going to do is Doug Burgum at Interior, every other department head is looking for the assets that we can mobilize. So if we have energy leases, federal government owned, back to the housing shortage, federal government owns a lot of land in downtown urban areas. Can we, or in suburban adjacent things in Nevada and Utah, Can we use that land?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Oh, because you think you'd get a higher return. Right.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Yeah, I mean, not that I'm keeping score, not that I watch it closely, but the 10-year treasury today is 428. 428, yeah. So can we— It's responding well. Can we do better than 428? And I think with this group and this cabinet, and if we can put in— Right now, we're working on the study group for the sovereign wealth fund, and we want to do best practices. We're talking to people around the world.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
We're talking to investment people. We're talking to a lot of the other big sovereign funds, and we're going to do best practices. We want this to be a legacy of that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
It's incredible. And I was with one of the Middle Eastern funds, and I said something about oil revenue. We haven't had an injection into the fund in 20 years.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Yeah, I think it was just this idea of it was supposed to be a safety net, not some kind of prosperity ramp.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Well, I think the biggest challenge we're having right now is trying to get private sector to lock in for some things that might not have a payoff for five, 10 years. And how do we avoid student body left, student body right with administrations coming and going? So we're working on that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
You could have a long-term view, but then you're trying to gauge the short-term against that. And I loved it. And for 35 years, I did what was called macro investing. So eventually, I was trading currencies, bonds, commodities. the equities, some credit, and I got to travel around the world meeting leaders and trying to figure out what the next move was in policy.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
So to your point, we have this very delicate balancing act of making sure we... There's the tax side, but then the regulatory side. With fossil, it's tougher because it crosses a lot of state lines. There's a lot more permitting, a lot less permitting for solar farms, for wind, for geothermal.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Nuclear is going to be a big part of it, but it's not going to happen tomorrow.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Well, we got to fix the supply chain. We got to fix the regulatory. we've got to decide which model are we going to go with. I'm told that you two probably know more about nuclear than I do.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
But to the point that it's not investable, that's where the government needs to step in.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
And also I'm told, especially with the smaller plants, that you need to cluster them. And you've got to find somebody who wants to cluster on it and all that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
The national security aspect. But I would say 40... 50% of my day, Treasury does a lot of national security work, whether it's CFIUS in terms of foreigners who want to buy US assets, whether it's sanctions, whether it's OFAC, anti-money laundering. We've just designated the Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
We, President Trump, over the weekend launched a very aggressive strike on, missile strike on the Houthi assets. Well, underneath that, we'd already been working for several weeks on their bank accounts.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Or anyone who is adjacent to them. The Iranians supply the Houthis with their ecosystem... Previous to my getting here, Treasury had disrupted the ecosystem so much that the Iranians used to hand them cash. Now they're just handing them here, take this oil tanker and try to sell it. So there is the ability to break that down.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Well, there have been several, but a good example, my family was actually there. Because after the inauguration, I asked President Trump, may I bring my family in, say hello, get a photo. And we're sitting in the Oval, so it's myself, my 11-year-old daughter, my spouse. 15-year-old son, and President Trump's having a great conversation with him.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
And then he said, oh, Scott, while you're here, let me call in these other two people, and we need to discuss this. So they actually got to see government being done live. So there's that. I have to say, I think the moment with... President Trump, Vice President Vance, President Zelensky was kind of a once-in-a-lifetime thing in the Oval Office. I hope it's once-in-a-lifetime.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
But I was sitting there, kind of in the front row of history, Vice President, Secretary Rubio, myself on the sofa, and watching President Zelensky do what I thought was the biggest diplomatic own goal in history.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
High decibel, yes. Yeah. But kind of my job for 35 years was to be outside the room trying to put my ear to the door, maybe lift myself over the transom, figure out what the leaders needed to do, were going to do, and then how it would affect the markets. And now it's,
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
fantastic and amazing and stimulating and a little scary being the person in the room yeah who has to what should we do what can we do how's it going to affect the markets how's it going to affect the real economy that what what's it going to do to working people in america so how do we fix affordability uh we're just going to have to go through and where where's the problem what's the solution
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
in terms of like, are the insurance markets broken? What can we do? There's been no, and I've been involved in the house building business. There's been no technological change in house building in 50 years, maybe 60. Some of the building codes go all the way back to the Chicago fire. So what can we do that, the way we categorize housing, it's stick built or modular.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
there something in the middle prefab because the more that comes out of a factory the more that it's standardized that neighborhoods from dc from dc to bethesda to potomac to like you could be in contiguous neighborhoods and if they're different municipalities they'd all have different building codes not zoning building And why is that? They're adjacent. Why do the houses have to be?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
So is there some kind of window guidance that the federal government can give in terms of the more that comes out of the factory, the cheaper it will be, the faster we can make it, things like that?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
I think there are a lot of things where you can look around and find what's something that's interesting that's being done somewhere. So I lived in Greenwich, Connecticut for a while, maybe the richest suburb in America. There's a ton of multifamily there, very expensive, very nice multifamily. There's some affordable housing, but Greenwich is not all 10 acres and a horse farm.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
The state of Connecticut has put in a, I guess it's a law, that every municipality has to allocate 10% of vacant land to multifamily. And if the zoning board won't give you a hearing, you as a developer, you as a nonprofit for housing, can go over the top and go to Hartford. And then Hartford will give you the authority.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
No town wants the state doing it on their behalf, so now the towns negotiate. So I think that there are a lot of things that can be done. Again, on insurance, is there something that I've been thinking about, is there something the federal government could do for California, where we come in, Everyone's paying homeowners insurance. Then there's reinsurance on top of that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Then I think the California reinsurance company is called FAIR on top of that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Yeah, but you're stacking it. So is there something we could do where you put another layer of private money in there and then the federal government is the fifth risk
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
You know, it's a lot of that. There's another great macro investor called Bruce Kovner. And he had this saying that he said, you know, I succeeded because I could imagine a different future and believe it could happen. So the keys to believe it could happen and then manage the risks. So could you imagine what would happen if the Iron Curtain came down? What would happen?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
tranche right but if the federal government comes in can we mandate down here proper hygiene changes in the building code well changes in the building code changes and brush cutting right and material choices yeah right right yeah makes sense So I think there's a lot.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
But I mean, energy costs are energy costs. But then there's also, for food, the transportation cost of getting it to the grocery store, everything that's made out of petroleum products. I think we can do that. And I think there's a lot to do. And it shouldn't be too hard. So we're actually, we should probably be announcing it in about 10 days. We're going to have an affordability czar.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
But it's going to be someone with a lot of experience in supply chains figuring out what are a lot of the quick fixes we can do. Because back to the question, What really has people anxious, inflation for now is actually pretty close in, but the affordability has gotten so away from everyone that how can we bring that down?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Well, it transitions. And I think it's also not being dogmatic. Totally. I saw what the Biden administration did with EVs. I have an EV. I can't wait for it to come off lease. But I also have a hybrid. And I think I fill it up maybe three times a year. But this administration had a jihad on hybrids because they didn't pass the purity test.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Because that's why Europe's kind of over a barrel, literally. And it's why the Russian war machine hasn't, again, literally run out of gas.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Yeah. I mean, we're not going to crush labor anymore.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Well, how about this? I we had a lot of foreign leaders come in and I knew someone in the in one of their entourages, I won't tell you which one, but afterwards he comes up to me and goes, holy crap, because he's really smart.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
President Trump has perfect recollection, because he was talking about something that had happened in that country 30 years ago, and he said, and he really, so President Trump listens, he is judicious, he is just taking it all in, he likes to see how people react, It's just incredible executive skills. Yeah. And the other thing too, that he's tough.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
I mean, you all do as venture capitalists, but how could the world live in a different state?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
But I went in and I showed him, we were talking about something the other day, and I said, well, this is going to cause some layoffs. Well, let's try to fix it.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Let's try to fix it. So I always say, he really regards himself as the mayor of America. There are 330 million people.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
And he cares deeply about all of them. And he doesn't care whether you're Elon Musk or the guy cutting the rose garden. You're his constituent.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
So it's a great historical example. And it also kind of brings in three dimensions. So I was the analyst. Stan was the portfolio manager. And then in a way, George was the risk manager. So I was running the UK office. I was on the ground in the UK. And I had this light bulb go off. And I thought, the fulcrum thought, or my differentiated view was that the UK had just had a big housing boom.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
And UK mortgages at that time, they didn't have long-term mortgages. They were all floating rates. So if the Bank of England raised rates on a Wednesday, your mortgage went up on a Friday. The UK had hooked into something called the exchange rate mechanism. They had to balance versus the Deutsche Mark. They had to stay within a band.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
I noticed that if they raised or I thought if they raised rates to try to stay in the band and protect the currency, it would be unsustainable because British homeowners would get bankrupted. Stan's great feat of analysis was figuring out that these bands set up this incredible asymmetric bet because
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
I can push them up against one side of the band, and their mandate is just to push me back to the other side. So we just lose 2.5%. And Stan tells this great story of, like, telling George Soros, oh, well, here's what I want to do. And he says he told him, and George says, well, how much do you want to do? And he said, probably 100% of the fund. And he said, Soros gave me this really sour look.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
And he thought that he had said something wrong. He goes, well, why wouldn't you do three times that deal? So anyway, it was, we pushed him against,
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
the bank of England, the British government had to buy this unlimited amount of pounds and they started raising interest rates and this was September of 1992 and eventually they just weren't able to sustain the pressure from the high rates and came out and then the asymmetric risk reward was we made about 20 something percent in a day.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
And back to what was really Stan's genius, I don't know if either of you played backgammon, but in backgammon, there's the move after the move. And so Stan, we'd made all that money, and we were kind of euphoric. Okay, now what? Because there's going to be the trade after the trade. So we made that much in a day, but then it was actually the trade after the trade. This isn't well publicized.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
I think we made another 20%. during the rest of the year.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Well, look, I think it goes back to something that's unsustainable is unsustainable. And one of the reasons I'm sitting here now is about 18 months ago, I went to see President Trump. I'd known the Trump family for 30 years.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
I'd never known the president that well, but to tell him that I wanted to get involved in the campaign because I was so alarmed with what the Biden administration was doing with the debt and deficit.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Endless spending, but endless spending when we were in solid economic territory, or not in a war, first time ever, and I thought it was very cynical, because I actually thought, well, we're gonna spend, spend, spend, and then there'll be no choice but to raise taxes.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
So you'd go into this equilibrium that you could just never get out of, and you become kind of a European-style social democracy, the malaise. And I also think they were very cynical on immigration, because if you take the stated number, 12 million, the president's number, 22 million, I don't know what the truth is, kind of lean toward the president.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
But it was, oh, we're going to let all these people cross the border. You can't ever make them. Problem's too big to make them go home. But I like to stay in my finance lane. So the finance lane was, we're going to just go to the point of no return and kind of inflict these... progressive financial values on the country, there'll be no way out.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Well, it was always there, and you had these distributional aspects, because back to your question of Wall Street versus Main Street, that it was driving me crazy when Vice President Harris said, I'm going to fight for the middle class, and she'd eviscerated the middle class. Or these policies, inadvertent, intentional, had eviscerated the middle classes and really the bottom 50%.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
if you didn't have assets.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Not only did... inflation go up but if you look uh jason trinnert has this thing i think he calls it the everyman index and um so cpi went up about 22 during the period but the everyman index was up over 30 35 because the the bottom 25%, the bottom 50% of wage earners have a different basket than we do. And it inflated much faster. Use car prices were up. Car insurance.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Car insurance, rent, groceries. And not only is it unfair, but it's just unstable.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
Well, I think what happened, the Democrats will tell you that the big spending bills were needed for rescue. And I would say in March 2020, of 21, the economy didn't need rescue. It was already in recovery. So these were rescue-sized packages. And even Larry Summers, I remember there was a great debate between Larry Summers and Paul Krugman.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
And Summers, I think, said, look, this is at least $900 billion, a trillion too much. And the Federal Reserve was, to the summer of 23, 22, Federal Reserve was very slow off the mark. And we ended up, and again, imagine top 10% has assets, stock market is flying, you're in the bottom 50%, you have no assets, but you have debt.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Scott Bessent | All-In in DC!
So credit cards are up, mortgages, impossible to buy a house, house prices had gone through the roof due to COVID. So it really did end the American dream. But we've been suffering these distributional effects.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1001: Bill Kristol: Give Back the Statue of Liberty
Not at all. I've been in the investment business for 35 years, and I can tell you that corrections are healthy. They're normal. What's not healthy is straight up that you get these euphoric markets, that's how you get a financial crisis. It would have been much healthier if someone had put their brakes on in 06, 07. We wouldn't have had the problems in 08. So I'm not worried about the markets.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1001: Bill Kristol: Give Back the Statue of Liberty
Not at all, Chris. What I'm saying is the American dream is not let them eat flat screens. That if American families aren't able to afford a home, don't believe that their children will do better than they are. The American dream is not contingent on cheap baubles they have from China, that it is more than that.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1001: Bill Kristol: Give Back the Statue of Liberty
And we are focused on affordability, but it's mortgages, it's cars, it's real wage gains.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
So like I said, that's not an invitation for anybody. Of course not. for action, but it was a tough time. And then in 1984, President Reagan won reelection with 49 states. And I think they may have even let Mondale win Minnesota just so it wasn't a skunk. Just to be nice, yeah. And that's what President Trump is doing now. For years, the American worker, middle class has been eviscerated.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
Look, it is. And I always think that you can never be 100% sure, but you can stay within sight of guardrails and keep moving forward. I can't remember. One of the Sunday morning shows I was on a couple of weeks ago, the commentator asked me, she said, can you guarantee me there won't be a recession? And I said, I can't guarantee you anything. There's nothing that tells me there should be one.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
So I believe that this is going to work, just like President Reagan believed that supply-side economics was going to work. But what I do know is that the old system wasn't working. I think that's right. And if you look at a system that's not working, you got to be brave to change it. So what wasn't working? Would have been really fun for me to come in and just keep issuing a lot of debt.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
And it's almost like a bodybuilder is taking steroids. Outside looks great. You're muscular. Inside, you're killing your vital organs. That's what was going on here. But it would have been easy to keep pumping up the economy, borrowing a lot of money, creating a lot of government jobs. There was no controversy when we're doing all that. But you were going to end up in a calamity.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
If you go back and look, you look at the financial crisis in 07-08. Economy looked great right up until then. You go back and you look at the end of the dot-com bubble and then the whole credit problem, the fraud at WorldCom, Enron, some other companies, economy looked great until it didn't. And I think one of the things that we won't get credit for
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
but that this administration will have done is avoiding a financial calamity. Think about it that they've done an analysis that one of the reasons 9-11 happened because the airlines didn't want to pay for reinforced doors. Yes. They kept pushing back. FAA didn't push hard enough. And now we've got the reinforced doors. So I look at it, we're putting on the reinforced doors before the crash.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
Like, what's that going to be like? It's going to be the president's decision. And I think his view is this has been going on for a long time for friends and foes. And we're going to see where this plays out. I think what's going to be more important than the discussion with countries is the discussion with companies. So what do companies want to do?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
As President Trump said yesterday, best way to get around the tariffs, build your factory here. And what can we do here at Treasury to help that? We're pushing to get the tax bill done so we can guarantee the tax. low taxes, full depreciation within the first year. We're working with Secretaries Burgum and Wright on energy security, and we're working on getting the regulations down.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
American workers have taken it on the chin. And we're just starting to see some of the research now. We're seeing research on what's called the China shock, from 2004, it's just coming out now. And it's what you know, it's what I know. But finally, academics are saying, oh, gosh, the American workers never recovered from the China shock. What a surprise. And President Trump sensed it 40 years ago.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
The president, I don't know whether he talked about it yesterday or the day before, Taiwan's semiconductor manufacturer in the world, Lee Zeldin, the EPA commissioner, is working to push through all the permits that they need because we've just gone into this regulatory morass where it takes so long to get things done in this country.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
So I think what will be more interesting are the individual company announcements more than the country announcements.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
Or pay the tariff.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
Well, I don't know if they can retaliate for a couple of reasons. If you look at the history, and I used to teach economic history, and when you look at the history, we are the debtor nation. Yes. We have...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
the trade deficits, the surplus nation is in the weaker position because the Chinese business model and Tucker, by the way, the Chinese business model and the economy are the most unbalanced, imbalanced in the history of the modern world. We've never seen anything like this in terms of their export level relative to their GDP, relative to their population.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
So I think it is going to be very difficult for them to try to change the model. They're in a deflationary recession slash depression right now. They're trying to export their way out of it, and we can't let them do that. But I think that when you think the Chinese manufacturing system is like that old Disney movie with the brooms carrying the buckets, there's nothing you can do.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
That's their business model. It's not going to stop. Now, what could happen, if you were to say, Scott, What's the dream scenario? That somehow there could be a deal where the US and China We want more manufacturing, which would mean a smaller part of the economy's consumption.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
The Chinese have this imbalanced economy with too much manufacturing, and actually the Chinese consumers really get the short end of the stick. So Chinese households, they're caught in what's called the middle-income trap.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
that could we do something together to say, okay, you rebalance, you consume more, manufacture less, we are going to consume less and manufacture more, and we'll be military rivals, There'll still be an economic rivalry, but we're going to level the playing field by a lot. Now, that's not going to happen tomorrow. That's not going to happen in a month.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
But over the next few years, they may have to come around because I think their business model is broken. I think President Trump's broken their business model with these tariffs.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
Exactly.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
They can't survive without them.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
Well, I think what gives me a lot of confidence is the relationship between President Trump and Chairman Xi. Yes. That when you have a direct line of communication at the very top, then I think it's very difficult for things to go haywire. Interesting. What about the rest of the world? What about Europe?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
Look, the Europeans, we look back and there was the famous meeting where President Trump told the Europeans, you're insane for building Nord Stream 2. What are you doing? You already get most of your energy from Russia and you're going to double down on it? And they did. And look what happened. We blew it up. Somebody did. Somebody did. Probably Putin.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
Some Norwegian fisherman bumped into it is what I read. But look, the Europeans go kicking and screaming. But I think they're going to have to rebalance too. Germany has a very imbalanced export economy and they were on the verge of de-industrialization. They were the opposite of us. They had expensive energy. Yes.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
But out on the campaign trail, starting in 2015, up until last year, he has promised the American workers that the old standard of living can come back. And because what we've seen over the past at least 20 years since the China shock, but more like the past 30, are these massive distributional problems where the coast have done great. Yes.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
They were depending on Italy and the countries in the south to keep the Euro suppressed. And they were selling into China. And now China is becoming their competitor.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
They were, only difference now is,
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
there there was a lot of competition back then but there's a level of civility yeah and the the real danger here and if there were a midterm loss and i don't think there has to be you know what's going to happen i know what's going to happen democratic house is going to go immediately to impeachment for something of course right like the law fair is going to start again
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
I believe that it's going to work. And I know that what we were doing wasn't working. Yes. So I think we have to try this and I have a high competence ratio. It's going to work. And I have a very high confidence ratio. The good news is we have President Trump's previous term when everyone said none of this was going to work. Oh, the China tariffs are going to do this.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
They're going to cause inflation. They didn't. This is going to happen to working class. It's going to be bad for working class Americans. Well, guess what? Working class Americans that. Hourly workers did better than supervisory workers. The bottom 50% of households, their net worth increased faster than the top 10% of households.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
And I'm not happy with what's going on in the market today, but the distribution of equities across households, the top 10% of Americans own 88% of equities. 88% of the stock market. The next 40% owns 12% of the stock market. The bottom 50 has debt. They have credit card bills. They rent their homes. They have auto loans. And we've got to give them some relief.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
I was struck by the statistic from last year. That's the message right there. Just as a bystander, I'm like, wow, okay. Or that I like...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
the examples and i was really struck by two different statistics last year summer of 2024 americans took more european vacations than they had in history summer of 2024 more americans were using food banks than they ever have in history i went into two food banks that near my hometown to ask what's the story and they said you know it really takes
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
For a lot of people, it's a loss of dignity to walk in a food bank. Worse. But they were seeing something, a new phenomenon, that it wasn't their traditional clientele. It wasn't people who'd lost their homes. It wasn't people out on the street. These were working families who could no longer, $100 at the grocery store,
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
that basket of groceries every week, they were missing five, six, seven things, and they were coming to the food bank to top up. So that's not a great America. Record European vacation, record food banks. And no reason we can't keep the record European vacations going, but we got to take care of these other people. But And you know what? That they don't want handouts.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
And the middle of the country has just seen quality of life The life expectancy decline. They don't think their children are going to do better than they are. And a lot of people don't care. And President Trump cares. This administration cares. And this is the first step towards realigning that a lot of our trading partners, including some of our allies, have not been good partners.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
The Democrats had this strategy called Compensate the Loser. So first of all, the name of that strategy, I don't think the bottom 50% of Americans are losers. I think the system hasn't worked for them. I think that they are winners. It's just a bad system. So we are going to fix the system. And look, they want good jobs. They want their kids to do better than they do. They want to own a home.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
They want to pay down their debt. This isn't hard. And I think that we can do this in the next four years.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
No, they were more, my NetJet was an hour late. I had the worst day. My NetJet was an hour late. You can't believe, oh, my God, I'm going to switch charter companies. So that's... And look, Tucker, I'm especially attuned to what I think is going on with the United States, because I will tell you, my family was very affluent. Early settlers, we were very affluent for about 250 years.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
My dad made a lot of bad financial choices. So when I was born, first six, seven, eight years, we were affluent. He lost everything. And so I've seen what that's like. I've seen both sides. Yes. That I was fortunate enough to be able to make it back and that Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
If tariffs are so bad, why do they have them? My question. Why do they have them? Or if the American consumer is going to pay all the tariff, then why do they care about tariff? Because they're going to eat them. So I think that this is the beginning of a process. We're going to reindustrialize, that we have gone to a highly financialized economy.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
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The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
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The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
We have stopped making things, especially a lot of things that are relevant for national security. I think one of the few good outcomes from COVID was we had a beta test for what maybe a kinetic war with a large adversary could look like. And it turned out that these highly efficient supply chains were not strategically secure.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
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The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
Well, Tucker, thank you for having me. And as you said, the president's been talking about this for four decades. Yes. And this is transformational for the American economy, for the American worker and for the new Republican alignment. And it's a combination of the old and new ideas. Some of the old ideas were put away. You know, I always tell everyone and they don't want to hear it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
So that we don't make our own medicines, that we don't make our own semiconductors, that we don't make our own ships anymore. So I think if I were to say, was there any good outcome from COVID? It woke the world up to these supply chain problems. So economic security is national security. President Trump and I have talked about that a lot. So this is...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
So I think that they should focus on monetary policy, doing the best that they can for the American economy, the American people, keeping inflation low, and then the rest, there are a lot of other banking agencies too. So the Fed controls the weather now too? What were they doing with climate?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
Well, I will tell you, there's something that the Treasury Secretary chairs something called the Financial Stability Oversight Council, and it's all the financial regulators. And I think it was two weeks before Silicon Valley Bank went under, FSOC issued a report and guess what they said the biggest risk to the financial system was? Climate. Really?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
Not that there was a large bank in California that was having a slow motion run on its assets and that it would cause another bank failure than another bank failure. It was climate. So as far as I can see, climate's been pretty good. They failed. The regulators failed. And I think that's what people are getting sick of.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
And it's back to one of my favorite phrases that President Trump uses, common sense. Yes. It's just common sense that if you have a whole bunch of deposits that could leave your bank with a click, you shouldn't have all these long term assets. But they were too busy worrying about the weather. And there was also some degree of regulatory capture.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
a national security issue that we're seeing here, but it's also an economic security issue, and it's to I don't want to say redistribute, but it is to give working Americans real wage gains and enhance their lives. And I've said out on the campaign trail, one of my most frequent mottos was Wall Street's done great. It can continue doing well, but it's Main Street's turn. It's Main Street's turn.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
seems hard to believe to the average citizen, the CEO of Silicon Valley Bank was on the board of the San Francisco Federal Reserve, who was his chief regulator. Are they going to tell that guy what to do? Why is gold moving around the world in such huge quantities right now? Well, a couple of things. It's moving Physically, it's moving because of potential tariffs here.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
So it was unclear whether we were going to exempt gold from tariffs, which I believe we have. So there was a big move out of Alts in Switzerland, out of Alts in London to get it into New York. And look, there are a lot of different stores of value over time. Bitcoin's becoming a store of value. Gold has historically been a store of value.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
I think what's interesting is where do we see the gold demand coming from? A huge amount is from China. Yes. Where, as I said, they're in the middle of an economic recession slash depression. People don't trust the Chinese currency because they have capital controls. There are 1.4 billion Chinese who all want to get their money out and they won't let them. They will let them buy gold.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
I think that gold has a lot of history going with it. A friend of mine's grandmother during Russia had a financial crisis in 98. Then they had a big inflation. And a friend of mine's grandmother went out and bought 18 bicycles. and put them in her apartment, and that was her store of value. Yes. How'd she do on the bike investment? Great. Great. I wish I did that well.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
But gold also has other applications, a lot of applications, jewelry in India, but it's something that historically people have all agreed on, and gold does not have – gold can't have a fiscal problem. Gold cannot have a gigantic budget deficit. Gold cannot have a war. So just the fact that it is this isolated thing makes it very interesting.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
And the fact that the entire global trading system, until Richard Nixon took us off, was tied to gold. So you're not anti-gold. Oh, no, no, no, no. When I had my fun, I think people might have called me a gold bug. How did you wind up interacting with Zelenskyy? The president asked me to go to Kyiv. Well, he actually asked me to lead the economic agreement that was part of his peace plan.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
And I think it's important to look at the arc of President Trump's peace plan. And he had sequenced it really well. It was, we're going to sign a deal with Ukrainians, and it'll do several things. One, it will make the U.S. and Ukraine partners, link us closer together. Two, it will be a symbol to Russian leadership that the U.S. isn't abandoning Ukraine.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
But importantly, three, it will show the American people that we have an economic stake and that we haven't just been doing these massive grants, which has been the history of USAID. Of course. So Ukraine succeeds, we succeed, and it could be a long-term partnership. Now, President, I thought it was important to take the agreement to Kyiv and present it to President Zelensky.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
Everyone was telling me, oh, no, having Michu in Vienna, he's going to be at the Munich Security Conference a few days later. I said, no. I want to go there and discuss it with him. And that's how I ended up going to Kyiv. Very interesting going to Kyiv. Fly to Poland. Then you get on, I don't know if you've been on it, get on this night train for 10 hours.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
And you arrive at Kyiv at 8.30 in the morning. And for anyone who they said, oh, the President Trump selling out to the Russians, not selling out to the Russians, the Russians bombed Kiev four hours before I got there. They hadn't bombed since November.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
So the Russians didn't like the look of this deal because it thought that it was actually something durable for the US people and the Ukrainian people. So what happened? President Zelensky was in the mood to sign the deal that day. We had a spirited discussion. And I said to him, you've got 50 reporters out there.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
I am here to show that there is no daylight between the American people, the Russian people, between Ukrainian people, between the... American leadership and Ukrainian leadership. I said, you've opened up daylight sides of the Grand Canyon. What are we going to go out and tell those people? I said, tell them I'm going to sign the deal in Munich.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
And that's what we saw yesterday. It's Main Street's turn.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
I said, so you're going to sign the deal when you see Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Rubio in Munich? Yes. He didn't sign it there. There's a lot of back and forth the following week. They're begging to come to the White House and should make him sign the deal before he comes. And then he got to the Oval Office and blew up what should have been the easiest thing to do in the world.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
He's supposed to show up, have a press conference. We're going to have a private lunch if he had anything on his mind. There were going to be nine of us, nine of them in the White House dining room. He could have aired his grievances then. And there's a famous photo in the East Wing ballroom of everything laid out on the table to be signed. And it never got signed.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
And they have the lowest retirement age in Europe. It's 60. Put it in contrast, France is 62 and Italy is 67.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
Look, a couple of things is he was a performer, kind of a vaudevillian, and he was an ordinary person thrown into a fraught time, rose to the occasion, was heroic, and I think is stuck And I think under a tremendous amount of pressure, I think that some of the government officials around him and the cabinet are very good.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
I think some of the people around him, he's not getting the best advice, that his advisers are not perfect. And I think if we go back to the agreement, I think one of the great things about the agreement is it makes sure that the money comes to the American people. and the Ukrainian people. Because, Tucker, let me tell you what the agreement wasn't.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
It wasn't one of these rapacious Chinese deals where it's sign over your mines, sign over your port, or it wasn't a loan to own. Here's the loan. You're never going to be able to pay it back. We're going to get this. It's a genuine economic partnership
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
That they put in assets, we can put in loans from our overseas banks, we put in American know-how, and we don't make any money unless they make money.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
and you know who doesn't like that people with their hand in the till right right because we were regulating the flow of the money so i think that's part of the glitch i am hopeful that the that it was a bug not a feature of the system and that that's been fixed we're expecting a ukraine ukrainian technical team beginning of next week
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
and i'm hopeful we can get this thing signed and go back to a win-win situation because the president trump's i i didn't give you the full arc of the deal president trump wanted to create the this deal with the ukrainians then be able to go to russian leadership with and show them that We do stand with the Ukrainians, but on an economic basis.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
And then the Russians would be incentivized to come to the table also. And so the sequencing has been thrown off, but I think we can fix it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
I don't know. Tucker, in my life, I always try to look forward. And I think if this deal works, then that money could end up being small change. A good way to think about it When the Iron Curtain came down, Ukraine and Poland's economies were roughly the same size. Poland is three and a half or four times larger now. Yes.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
Poland is going to have one of the highest per capita GDPs in the world, higher than some Western European countries. For sure. Ukraine, to your point, because of various kleptocracy aspects, has been held back. yes so hopefully with u.s assistance and president trump engineering this peace deal ukrainian people can have a better future
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
Look, the market goes up and down. Warren Buffett has a saying, in the short run, the market's a voting machine. In the long run, it's a weighing machine. And in the long run, it's going to weigh, do we have good policies? And in my former business, I commented on market structure, market ups and downs a lot. I'm trying not to do that.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
We all take President Trump's lead. Yeah. We know we had a meeting yesterday morning. We had a meeting after the announcement in the Rose Garden before we went out doing media. And as you know, he's his own best spokesman. Yes. Nobody can do it better. And then we fan out and we are all unified behind this and his vision. That's why we're here.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
If you didn't want to be part of it, shouldn't be here.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
Well, the one thing I will say that no one should listen to anyone in the markets talk about the US dollar. other than President Trump or myself. We are the only ones who speak for this administration, the United States government, on dollar policy.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
I can tell you, we have a strong dollar policy, and we are putting in all of the necessary ingredients to make sure the dollar is strong over the long run. Can it go up and down on a Bloomberg terminal over the short run? Sure. Can individual bilateral moves happen between the dollar and the Mexican currency, the dollar and the yen? Sure, that's what I made my living doing. I'm glad it doesn't.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
But over time, if we put in solid economic fundamentals and do this transformative program, then the dollar is going to do great. And the American people are going to do great. Secretary, thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
But for everyone who thinks that these market declines are all based on the president's economic policies, I can tell you that this market decline started with the Chinese AI announcement of DeepSeek. So the so-called MAG7, the tech stocks, had been doing very well for about 18 months, led the market. And I think that there was kind of a real dose of reality in what was going on in AI.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
And I think U.S. is going to remain the leader in AI, but the AI-related stocks started coming down. So, like, if I were to analyze in my old hat, And this is the only time I'm going to talk about it. My old hat, what's happening with the market, I'd say it's more a MAG7 problem and not a MAGA problem.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
Well, it's sad, but if we look, the equal-weighted S&P, even after today's moves, down 4% in the year. In a long-term chart, you wouldn't even notice that. And I think the most important thing that we can do, that I can do as the Treasury Secretary, that President Trump wants to do, is put in sound fundamentals. for the underlying economy.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
And if the underlying economy is good, if taxes are stable, if businesses have predictability, if we have cheap and plentiful energy, if we deregulate, if we treat our workforce well, then we're going to have a great stock market.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
So, Tucker, I just want to go back for a moment, too, that one of the things that the tariffs are doing is we are pushing back against other economic systems.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
The original tariff man was Alexander Hamilton. And he used tariffs to fund the new nation and to protect American industry. President Trump has added a third leg to the stool, and he uses tariffs to negotiate. But I think this is not unlike – I was a freshman in college when Ronald Reagan came in in 1980, and a new day in America. And –
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
so the chinese have a very different economic system they have low costs some would call it literally slave labor they subsidize industry with subsidized loans they have a lot of non-tariff barriers your show can't be shown there yes um so um so we're pushing back the against that and with the tariff income it can be substantial
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
And if we think like a classical model of tariff income would say if there's a 10 percent tariff, then the currency would appreciate about 40 percent of that. So 4 percent of it. Then the producer in the other country would eat about 4 percent. And then the U.S. consumer might have a one-time price adjustment of 2%. So in a 10% tariff, maybe the consumer pays 2% of it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
We saw there was a study out recently from a group at MIT that shows that with President Trump's first China tariffs, which were approximately 20%, the price level went up 0.7. So to answer your question, if we could put on a 20% tariff, And have the foreigners pay that and use that money to bring down our government deficit and keep taxes low here.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
That's a very unique formula that hasn't been tried in this country for a long time.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
What we're going to have now, we are in this very odd, what I would call betwixt and between, between the tariff income and what Doge is doing in terms of the cutting government expenses. So CBO scoring, and for 35 years, I was on the other side of the wall and I would always, oh, well, CBO says this.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
And I didn't really realize that kind of CBO scoring is a lot like Enron accounting, that it's not real. And when you actually look at the real story... But you assumed it was on the outside? Sure. Well, they're experts. It's a congressional budget office. It's a congressional budget office. And they're well-intentioned people. They just have the nonsensical rules. Think about this.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
When all the scoring's done over a 10-year window, Yes. So they just assume 1.7 or 1.8 percent economic growth over the 10 years. And that never moves. Whether you raise taxes or cut taxes doesn't move. So that's what during the campaign when Vice President Harris was announcing all these big tax increases she wanted to do and things like that.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
that the CBO was scoring her very well and President Trump wants to make the 2017 tax cuts permanent. That was kind of a blowout number because obviously growth is going to go up a lot when you cut taxes. So that was a long way of saying We will not get credit for the tariffs in any bill because Congress is not going to legislate it. President's doing it with executive authority.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
But the money will be coming in. We've already taken in several hundred million dollars on the China tariffs from his first term. We take in about $35 billion a year just on the old tariffs, not on the new ones. So in the CBO window.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
That's about $350 billion, which pays for a lot of the president's promises on no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime, making interest deductibility on autos made in the U.S. And think what the president's doing here. He is backing into... an affordability solution for the bottom 50% of wage earners, because they're the ones who will benefit from all four of those programs.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
When I talk to people now and they look back and they look at the Reagan years so fondly, I remember what it was like. And it was choppy. And the president- Very choppy. Very choppy. President Reagan stood the course. And look, this is not an invitation, but at one point in the early 80s, a farmer showed up with a shotgun at the Federal Reserve to kill Paul Volcker for raising rates.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
It's going to be a moving target, but could it be anywhere from $300 billion to $600 billion a year? Sure. Okay, so that's meaningful revenue. Very meaningful. But what will happen with tariffs over time, the ultimate goal of the tariffs, and the president says it all the time, bring your factory here. That's the best solution toward getting away from a tariff wall.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
So move your factory from China, from Mexico, from Vietnam, bring it here. So what will happen over time, we'll have substantial tariff income in the beginning. Manufacturers will build their factory here, the tariffs will drop, but the revenue from the factories, from income taxes, from all the new jobs will go up. So we'll be taking it in domestically as the tariffs drop.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
And why are the tariffs dropping? Because we're making it here and our trade deficit's dropping.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
I think we do. I think with AI, with automation, with so many of these factories are going to be new, they're going to be smart factories, that I think we've got all the labor force we need.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
what we were doing on the other side one of the reasons you know other other than my support for president trump that i came out from behind my desk and you know i had a pretty good life and i wanted to come out and really tell people that i was worried about an impending financial calamity given the high levels of government spending that were leading to high levels of government debt
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
So what we are doing, on one side, the president is reordering trade. On the other side, we are shedding excess labor in the federal government and bringing down federal borrowings. And then on the other side, that will give us the labor that we need for the new manufacturing industry. and we're going to relever the private sector.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class
So the private sector, in essence, has been in recession during the Biden years. And this is an opportunity to right-size the federal government and unleash the private sector again, because it's been hemmed down by excessive regulation, and it's been crowded out by the government.