Transcript: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” March 2, 2025
The following is a transcript of an interview with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, aired on March 2, 2025 on “Facing the Country with Margaret Brennan”.
Margaret Brennan: Good morning, Mr. Treasury Secretary.
Secretary Scott Bessent: Good morning Margaret.
Margaret Brennan: So let’s dig into this because there seems to be some perceptual gap there. Our poll also shows that at least half of the National Report’s reports are concerned about paid food and groceries and housing. They continue to say the economy is unfavorable, even more important than last month, and 49% tell us that the economy is getting worse. When can Americans expect the benefits President Trump says he will get on the first day?
Secretary Scott Bessent: Margaret, I found it interesting that over the past year and a half, during the campaign, most media said, oh, the economy is great. It’s just an atmosphere. Now that President Trump takes office, there is an economic problem. I’ll tell you what the problem is –
Margaret Brennan: We have a very simple plan for this.
Secretary Scott Bessent: Well, I haven’t seen this program yet, but overall the idea is that working-class Americans don’t know what they’re talking about, they don’t know their life experiences, they don’t know what their pocket book feels like. I tell you, one of the reasons President Trump was elected is the affordability crisis, and we are working on it. So after four years of disastrous policies, they encountered these huge deficits, which led to affordability issues, namely, government regulations. So what we are facing is the shock of demand for government spending, which is subject to over-regulated supply constraints. So we are abandoning the process of regulation, which will free up the supply side and we are reducing government spending. It took four years to bring us here. President Trump has been in office for five weeks, and I can tell you that we work every day. I will point out that since President Trump’s presidency, I’ve focused on 10 years of interest rates – 10 years of bonds I’ve focused on. Mortgage rates are lowered weekly. This is a good start.
Margaret Brennan: I heard that sometimes data lags behind reality, but when we talk about how people think about the economy, that’s exactly how they feel right now, and we’ve seen in the vote that 52% of Americans say Trump’s policies are making grocery prices go up. They say explicitly that on this bar chart, you see there. Therefore, this is an empirical and perceptual matter. When will it be transferred? When we see the benefits of the plan, are you talking about going on?
Secretary Scott Bessent: Look, I think President Trump said he will have the economy in six to twelve months, but I can tell you that we are working hard to get those prices down every day, but it took four years to bring us here, we have been five weeks, so interest rates are down. This is a very good start to housing affordability, car affordability, and we are working on this issue. At the Ministry of Finance, we will appoint affordable tsars. We will have an affordable committee. We focus on lasers –
Margaret Brennan: What does this mean? What is the affordable tsar?
Secretary Scott Bessent: Can the government make a big difference for working-class Americans by picking people in five or eight fields?
Margaret Brennan: OK. Well, one thing we hear the president talk about a lot of things is the plan to use tariffs. I know this is a business and trade representative authority, but you have talked about some of it before. If the president does raise the 10% tariffs he said this week, and 25% in Canada and Mexico, how much do you think they will affect Americans’ experiences? This will allow families to earn an additional $1,200 a year, the Peterson Institute said.
Speaker 1 Secretary Scott Bessent: Look, a few things my friends at Peterson College respect, I think they are a little alert. I think many of their supporters are anti-missions, so they are in the anti-propaganda position. Look, we have experience with President Trump’s first term where tariffs don’t affect prices. This is a holistic approach, that is, the tax will be cut, and there will be cheaper energy. So I hope we will reach the Fed’s 2% target soon. So, I expect inflation to continue to decline over the course of the year.
Margaret Brennan: So, should we expect these tariffs to arrive on March 4?
Secretary Scott Bessent: Well, there are a series of tariffs. On March 4, there are also large tariff plans to be outlined by Commerce and USTR on April 2, the president’s concept of reciprocity tariffs. This will be very road-dependent. This is – we will indicate what tariffs are in other countries on specific goods? What are non-tariff barriers? What is currency manipulation, what is manipulation of financing or labor manipulation? The EU is placing a horrible fine on our tech companies, and we will evaluate that and give them a chance to remedy so we can see a tricky problem, or if our trading party wants to correct parts, or if we want parts to correct something, then we can trade less well and then deviate from tarififf. So, it will depend on the path.
Margaret Brennan: That was Europe in April, was it mainly?
Secretary Scott Bessent: Well, this is from all over the world.
Margaret Brennan: OK. So when you say that the Peterson Institute is too dangerous, the average annual price is $1,200, what is the cost of a family? Do you think this is zero?
Secretary Scott Bessent: Well, we don’t know yet, because this is a dependency path, but what I can tell you is that I’m not worried about China. China will pay Chinese tariffs because their business model is exporting this inflation. They are the most unbalanced, most unbalanced economy in modern times, and it is a wrong idea to reduce production due to tariffs. They will continue to flood the market. They will lower the price. They will eat any ongoing tariffs.
Margaret Brennan: So I recently said on Bloomberg that Mexico is proposing to meet the tariffs in China, and you also want Canadians to do the same. You describe it as a fortress in North America. Is it in the work?
Secretary Scott Bessent: I don’t know yet. We will see Mexican leaders offer to do so. We didn’t hear it from Canadians, but I think it’s a good start because –
Margaret Brennan: By Tuesday, is it possible to offset the potential punishment for them?
Secretary Scott Bessent: By Tuesday, maybe the tariff wall is up and then we see what’s going on there. But I can tell you that under the cover of Covid, China has greatly improved its export capacity and they are trying to export the road to prosperity. They are in an economic crisis. They have huge deflation and it is unacceptable for them to export it to the rest of the world. And I think North America will be a good start to oppose this unfair trade policy.
Margaret Brennan: Well, it will be a big development.
Secretary Scott Bessent: Very important.
Margaret Brennan: This will avoid tariffs that should appear on Tuesday.
Secretary Scott Bessent: We will see.
Margaret Brennan: OK, we’ll watch that space. I want to ask you about Ukraine. You attended the Oval Office meeting on the side of Friday. He said yesterday that he – President Zelensky was told to leave the White House and then he signed the mineral agreement I know you’ve been working on, and although he was ready to sign it, he called it the first step towards security assurance. Not enough. We need not only that. A ceasefire without security guarantees is dangerous to Ukraine. The deal is still on the table, or is President Trump instructing you to abandon the project?
Secretary Scott Bessent: Margaret, without a peace agreement, it is impossible to reach an economic agreement. For economic agreements, the principle of sine is that Ukrainian leaders want to reach a peace agreement.
Margaret Brennan: I think this is entering
Secretary Scott Bessent: Well, that should be done, but President Zelensky entered the oval on Friday. There are three things to be done. There will be a press conference where we will have a private lunch with 16 of us, and as you can see from his post on X account Dan Scavino, we are all ready to sign the deal. So it’s unclear that President Zelensky has abandoned sequencing, Margaret, let me tell you that President Trump’s idea of this economic arrangement is further intertwined with the American people and the Ukrainian people and does not show sunlight. To show Russian leaders that there is no sunlight, President Zelensky entered the Oval Office and tried to relocate the deal before the world. We’re going- that’s made for a private lunch.
Margaret Brennan: Well, well, for me, this is the sequencing is changing, do you say you have to reach a peace deal before the mineral agreement? In any case, there was no negotiation on a peace agreement.
Secretary Scott Bessent: First of all, this is not a mineral agreement. This is a general economic consent. So calling it a mineral agreement is incorrect, and I think we have to see if President Zelensky wants to go on, what is it – if he wants the battle to go on, then what is the use of his economic agreement. President Trump hopes to reach a peace deal. .
Margaret Brennan: Vladimir Putin, it is unclear whether he wants a peace agreement, although no negotiations are conducted. The Secretary of State said this morning on another network.
Secretary Scott Bessent: Yes, President Trump said President Trump is trying to move towards peace. He repeatedly said during the episode of Oval that we don’t know if we will reach a peace deal, but we have to try.
Margaret Brennan: OK. Last Sunday, President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said on another network that the negotiation plan was the so-called draft Istanbul Parliament. The War Institute says that if it is described as the future of US diplomacy and framework, it will leave Ukraine helpless – facing future Russian threats or aggression. Why doesn’t Mr. Zelensky ask the right questions when he says there is no security guarantee, how do I agree to a ceasefire without security guarantees, or even a mineral agreement or investment agreement without security guarantees?
Secretary Scott Bessent: Well, look, I think the plan is for the EU to provide this security, not NATO, the EU. Again, Friday’s tragedy, I don’t know what President Zelensky was thinking. We had a great meeting on Monday at French President Emmanuel Macron. And then – we have Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday. Great meeting. They are all arcs of peace agreements. All President Zelensky had to do was come in and sign the economic agreement, and once again showed no sunlight, no sunlight between the Ukrainian people and the American people, he chose
Blow that one.
Margaret Brennan: So the deal is no longer on the table, just to be clear.
Secretary Scott Bessent: Not at the moment.
Margaret Brennan: Finance Minister Bessent thanks for coming in today.
Secretary Scott Bessent: Thank you Margaret.
