‘WHAT I LIKE IS DATA’: Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Bessent SCHOOLS NBC’s Kris­ten Welk­er on Tar­iff Impact

KRISTEN WELKER: Pres­i­dent Trump’s tar­iffs are being described as the biggest tax hike on Amer­i­cans in decades. They could cost the aver­age house­hold thou­sands of dol­lars. Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz had this to say. I’m going to play it, get your reac­tion on the oth­er side.

TED CRUZ: Tar­iffs are attacks on con­sumers. And I’m not a fan of jack­ing up tax­es on Amer­i­can con­sumers.

WELKER: Do you acknowl­edge that Pres­i­dent Trump’s tar­iffs will cause prices to go up on a range of goods?

SCOTT BESSENT: Well, Kris­ten, what I like is data. And if we look at the data from Pres­i­dent Trump’s first term, and there’s a big study that just came out from a group of econ­o­mists, most­ly at MIT, that showed that a 20% — 20% tar­iff on Chi­na led to a .7% tax or price lev­el increase over four years. I think that’s pret­ty good if we can take in 20% in tar­iffs and it’s a .7% increase. And Kris­ten, the — the lit­tle pub­li­cized sto­ry this week, every­one wants to look at the stock mar­ket going down. You know what else went down? Oil prices went down almost 15% in two days which impacts work­ing Amer­i­cans much more than the stock mar­ket does. Inter­est rates hit their low for the year. So I’m expect­ing the mort­gage appli­ca­tions to pick up.

WELKER: Well, just to be very clear though, I mean, dur­ing Pres­i­dent Trump’s first term, the cost to Amer­i­cans was near­ly $80 bil­lion in new tax­es due to his tar­iffs. Prices did go up on every­thing from wash­ing machines to tires.

BESSENT: Well, no, no, no. But let’s go back. The aggre­gate num­ber was. 7. So we can dis­cern the indi­vid­ual things. Also house­holds saw real net wages go up. So if wages go up faster than prices, which is not what hap­pened over the past four years, that’s why the bot­tom 50% got evis­cer­at­ed.

KRISTEN WELKER: And join­ing me now is Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Scott Bessent. Sec­re­tary Bessent, wel­come back to Meet the Press.

SCOTT BESSENT: Kris­ten, good to see you.

WELKER: It’s great to have you back after a very big week. Let’s start with the mar­ket reac­tion to Pres­i­dent Trump’s announce­ment of his tar­iffs. As I just laid out at the top of the pro­gram, the mar­kets lost more than $6 tril­lion in val­ue. Was this dis­rup­tion always part of the plan, Mr. Sec­re­tary?

BESSENT: Look, the – Kris­ten, mar­kets are organ­ic. They’re ani­mals. I mean, you nev­er know what the reac­tion is going to be. One thing that I can tell you, as the Trea­sury sec­re­tary, what I’ve been very impressed with is the mar­ket infra­struc­ture, that we had record vol­ume on Fri­day and every­thing is work­ing very smooth­ly. So, the Amer­i­can peo­ple – they can be very – take great com­fort in that. And in terms of the mar­ket reac­tion, look, we get these short-term mar­ket reac­tions from time to time. The mar­ket con­sis­tent­ly, the — under­es­ti­mates Don­ald Trump. I remem­ber that in 2016 the night Pres­i­dent Trump won, the mar­ket crashed. The mar­ket crashed, and it turned out he was going to be the most pro-busi­ness pres­i­dent – the – in over a cen­tu­ry, maybe in the his­to­ry of the coun­try, and we went on to very high after infla­tion returns for the next four years.

WELKER: Well, but this was the biggest two-day crash since the pan­dem­ic. And the pres­i­dent on Sat­ur­day urg­ing peo­ple, quote, “to hang tough,” say­ing, “It won’t be easy.” And I guess the big ques­tion on peo­ple’s minds, Mr. Sec­re­tary, how dif­fi­cult is it going to be? And how long are Amer­i­cans going to have to “hang tough?”

BESSENT: Well, again, I — I reject that — the assump­tion – there does­n’t have to be a reces­sion, the — who knows how the mar­ket is going to react in a day, in a week. What we are look­ing at is build­ing the long-term eco­nom­ic fun­da­men­tals for pros­per­i­ty that I think the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion had put us on the course toward finan­cial calami­ty.

WELKER: But just in terms of the uncer­tain­ty, I think, that peo­ple are feel­ing and see­ing, and Pres­i­dent Trump say­ing he wants peo­ple to hang tough acknowl­edg­ing there’s going to be what he has described as a short peri­od of pain. Can you help pro­vide some clar­i­ty for folks? How long will this peri­od of uncer­tain­ty be here? Are we talk­ing about weeks? Are we talk­ing about months? Are we talk­ing about years?

BESSENT: Again. This is an adjust­ment process. What we saw with Pres­i­dent Rea­gan, when he brought down the — the great infla­tion and we got past the Carter malaise that there — there was some chop­pi­ness at — at that time, but he held the course, and, you know, we’re going to hold the course. And this has been years in the build­ing, years in the mak­ing, you know, this unsus­tain­able sys­tem — our trad­ing part­ners have tak­en advan­tage of us. We can see that through the large sur­plus­es. We can see this through the large bud­get deficits. And also, Kris­ten, this is a nation­al secu­ri­ty prob­lem, which we saw dur­ing Covid. We saw dur­ing Covid that opti­mal sup­ply chains are not resilient. And what I could say is the only good out­come from Covid is it was a beta test for what would hap­pen if our sup­ply chains got bro­ken, and Pres­i­dent Trump has giv­en — has decid­ed that we can­not be at risk like that, for our cru­cial med­i­cines, for semi­con­duc­tors — the — for ship­ping, and we are going to move for­ward so the Amer­i­can peo­ple can know that they are going to have a more secure future.

WELKER: And yet, Pres­i­dent Trump promised that he was going to improve the econ­o­my start­ing on day one. He said prices are going to come down. More than 160 mil­lion Amer­i­cans, Mr. Sec­re­tary, as you know, are invest­ed in the mar­ket. Many of them have spent their lives sav­ing for their retire­ment. What is your mes­sage to Amer­i­cans who want to retire right now and who’ve just seen their life­time sav­ings drop sig­nif­i­cant­ly?

BESSENT: Kris­ten, I think that’s a false nar­ra­tive. Amer­i­cans who want to retire right now, Amer­i­cans who have put away for years in their sav­ings accounts, I — I think they don’t look at the day-to-day fluc­tu­a­tions of what’s hap­pen­ing. And you know, in fact, most Amer­i­cans don’t have every­thing in the mar­ket. Most Amer­i­cans in a 401K have what’s called a 60/40 account. 60/40 accounts are down 5 or 6% on the year. Peo­ple have a long-term view. They have a pro­gram that the rea­son the stock mar­ket is con­sid­ered a good invest­ment is because it’s a long-term invest­ment. If you look day-to-day, week-to-week, it’s very risky. Over the long term, it’s a good invest­ment.

WELKER: Pres­i­dent Trump’s tar­iffs are being described as the biggest tax hike on Amer­i­cans in decades. They could cost the aver­age house­hold thou­sands of dol­lars. Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz had this to say. I’m going to play it, get your reac­tion on the oth­er side.

SEN. TED CRUZ: Tar­iffs are attacks on con­sumers. And I’m not a fan of jack­ing up tax­es on Amer­i­can con­sumers.

WELKER: Do you acknowl­edge that Pres­i­dent Trump’s tar­iffs will cause prices to go up on a range of goods?

BESSENT: Well, Kris­ten, what I like is data. And if we look at the data from Pres­i­dent Trump’s first term, and there’s a big study that just came out from a group of econ­o­mists, most­ly at MIT, that showed that a 20% — 20% tar­iff on Chi­na led to a .7% tax or price lev­el increase over four years. I think that’s pret­ty good if we can take in 20% in tar­iffs and it’s a .7% increase. And Kris­ten, the — the lit­tle pub­li­cized sto­ry this week, every­one wants to look at the stock mar­ket going down. You know what else went down? Oil prices went down almost 15% in two days which impacts work­ing Amer­i­cans much more than the stock mar­ket does. Inter­est rates hit their low for the year. So I’m expect­ing the mort­gage appli­ca­tions to pick up.

WELKER: Well, just to be very clear though, I mean, dur­ing Pres­i­dent Trump’s first term, the cost to Amer­i­cans was near­ly $80 bil­lion in new tax­es due to his tar­iffs. Prices did go up on every­thing from wash­ing machines to tires.

BESSENT: Well, no, no, no. But let’s go back. The aggre­gate num­ber was. 7. So we can dis­cern the indi­vid­ual things. Also house­holds saw real net wages go up. So if wages go up faster than prices, which is not what hap­pened over the past four years, that’s why the bot­tom 50% got evis­cer­at­ed.

WELKER: Let — let me ask you about your view. Because last Jan­u­ary you wrote that, quote, “Tar­iffs are infla­tion­ary.” The Fed chair said the same thing on Fri­day that tar­iffs announced this week caused high­er infla­tion. Have you expressed any con­cerns to Pres­i­dent Trump direct­ly that his tar­iff pol­i­cy could be infla­tion­ary?

BESSENT: No. What — what I’ve said is, “Tar­iffs are a one-time price adjust­ment.” So there- there’s a big dif­fer­ence between insipid, endem­ic infla­tion with­in the sys­tem and con­sis­tent price lev­el increas­es and a one-time adjust­ment. But the oth­er thing that we’re doing is we are rais­ing wages for work­ing Amer­i­cans. We’re bring­ing down reg­u­la­tion. So, you know, there are esti­mates that reg­u­la­tions have caused the aver­age house­hold about $8,000. That when we get this tax bill through, then we will make the tax lev­els per­ma­nent. And — and again, the drop in the ener­gy prices, the drop in inter­est costs, now, I — I think real after-tax wages are going to go up for Amer­i­cans. And that’s what’s impor­tant.

WELKER: One of the big ques­tions and points of con­fu­sion I think is are these tar­iffs per­ma­nent? Or are they a nego­ti­at­ing tac­tic? Some admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials have said they’re per­ma­nent. Pres­i­dent Trump him­self has said he’s open to nego­ti­at­ing. So let me just ask you. Is Pres­i­dent Trump will­ing to nego­ti­ate? Or are these tar­iffs per­ma­nent?

BESSENT: Well, I think that’s gonna be a deci­sion for Pres­i­dent Trump, but I can tell you that, as only he can do at this moment, he’s cre­at­ed max­i­mum lever­age for him­self, and more than 50 coun­tries have approached – they have approached the admin­is­tra­tion about low­er­ing their non-ter­ri­to­ry bar­ri­ers, low­er­ing their tar­iffs, stop­ping cur­ren­cy manip­u­la­tion, and Kris­ten, you know, they’ve been bad actors for a long time, and it’s — it’s not the kind of thing you can nego­ti­ate away in days or weeks.

WELKER: You your­self have said that he’s using these for nego­ti­at­ing. He has told me direct­ly he’s open to nego­ti­at­ing. So just very clear­ly for the Amer­i­can peo­ple: Can you say defin­i­tive­ly, is he plan­ning to nego­ti­ate? Has he already start­ed nego­ti­a­tions with coun­tries?

BESSENT: Well, I — I — I think we’re going to have to see what the — what the coun­tries offer, and whether it’s believ­able, because again –

WELKER: So, he’s open to it, is what I hear you say.

BESSENT: The — no, no, no, it is — I think that we are going to have to see the path for­ward, because after 20, 30, 40, 50, years of bad behav­ior, you can’t just wipe the slate clean.

WELKER: All right. Let me ask you about one of the big ques­tions. Reces­sion, as you know, ana­lysts say the chances of a reces­sion are ris­ing in the wake of the tar­iffs announced this week. Do you believe that Pres­i­dent Trump’s tar­iffs are risk­ing the chances of a reces­sion?

BESSENT: I — I don’t. And I think we could see from the jobs num­ber on Fri­day that it was well above expec­ta­tions that, you know, we are mov­ing for­ward. So I — I see no rea­son that we have to price in a reces­sion.

WELKER: Okay. Before I let you go, I know you’ve been one of the offi­cials spear­head­ing the efforts to get Pres­i­dent Trump’s bud­get bill passed on Capi­tol Hill. It includes the pres­i­den­t’s plans for tax cuts, extend­ing the 2017 tax cuts, for exam­ple. Are you con­fi­dent that the pres­i­den­t’s bud­get bill will pass before the August recess?

BESSENT: We are shoot­ing for even a much ear­li­er date. And Kris­ten, I — I can tell you the under-report­ed sto­ry in D.C. is, you know, it’s fun from our side of the aisle to watch the Demo­c­ra­t­ic chaos. But the under-report­ed sto­ry is the Repub­li­can uni­ty. And Speak­er John­son has done an incred­i­ble job with a small minor­i­ty. He got rec­on­cil­i­a­tion instruc­tions out on the first try. He got a clean con­tin­u­ing res­o­lu­tion. Speak­er Thune, the — the Sen­ate issued the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion instruc­tions. So things are mov­ing very quick­ly.

WELKER: Very quick­ly, Pres­i­dent Trump called on the Fed chair to low­er inter­est rates. Do you think that Fed chair Jerome Pow­ell should low­er inter­est rates?

BESSENT: I — I — I think that when we see infla­tion drop­ping, that the Fed will do what it always does and low­er rates. But in the mean­time, what we can con­trol is the longer-term rate, the ten-year rate which hit — hit a new low on Fri­day. That’s where mort­gages are priced. That’s where long-term cap­i­tal for­ma­tion is priced. And, you know, back to the tax deal, when we can pass that, we will have eco­nom­ic cer­tain­ty.

WELKER: Okay, we’ll be watch­ing for that time­line you just laid out very close­ly. Sec­re­tary Scott Bessent, thank you so much for being here. We appre­ci­ate it.

BESSENT: Thank you.