Scott Bessent

And just to put it in context, Biden administration, they blew things out trying to get Vice President Harris elected in the fourth quarter.

So last year, 2024,

40% of the government spending occurred in the fourth quarter as they had the unsuccessful

their unsuccessful attempt to convince voters that they weren't in a world of hurt.

I forecast that we will have approximately a 200 to 300 billion fiscal contraction for the calendar year, which is between 0.7, 1% of GDP.

We're going to end the year with nominal growth.

close to 6%.

So we will be bringing down the deficit to GDP.

I believe it peaked 6.8% for the calendar year previous year, and we're going to be in the mid fives.

So it's a very good start on an important journey.

And I've said that I would, by the time President Trumpley's office, that we would like to

have something with a three in front of it, which will stabilize the deficit to GDP, which is an important number, and enable us to start paying down debt.

Well, a couple of things.

I think people didn't have an open mind.

They became the Trump tariffs, which immediately a large cohort, whether it was government officials, industry people, the general population, because President Trump wanted to do it, it must be bad.

I said the other day, President Trump cured cancer

but it caused dandruff, then people would say, well, you know, President Trump has caused a dandruff epidemic.

And look, there's a lot of orthodoxy that hasn't worked.

If we look back,

early 2000s, letting China into the global trading system, that they would become more like us.