- In an interview with CBS News on Sunday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent discussed tariffs, whether they’re inflationary, and what his department is doing to carry out President Donald Trump’s promise to bring down prices for Americans.
Two things President Donald Trump campaigned and won on: a promise to lower prices, and to enact tariffs. But economists claim tariffs can be inflationary; the Peterson Institute has said Trump’s tariffs could cost the typical American household more than $1,200 a year. The president himself even recently admitted “inflation is back.” Still, his Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent doesn’t appear worried.
In a Sunday interview with CBS News’ Face the Nation, Bessent was asked about tariffs and inflation.
“I respect my friends at the Peterson Institute; I think they’re a bit alarmist,” he said. “I think a lot of their supporters are anti-tariffs, so they take an anti-tariff position.”
Bessent continued: “Look, we have the experience of President Trump’s first term, where the tariffs did not affect prices. And it’s a holistic approach, that there will be tariffs, there will be cuts in regulation, there will be cheaper energy. So I would expect that very quickly we will be down to the Fed’s 2% target. So I’m expecting inflation to continue dropping over the year.”
Inflation heated up in January. Prices rose 3% over the last 12 months and 0.5% from December. President Trump said he had nothing to do with it and blamed his predecessor, which Bessent also did while explaining his plan to fix it. Bessent said the Biden administration enacted “four years of disastrous policies” that created “gigantic deficits,” and blamed inflation on government spending combined with supply constraints and “overregulation.”
But Trump, in his first term, added nearly twice as much to the federal debt as Biden did, according to a 2024 report from the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Trump’s debt contributions included $4.8 trillion in tax cuts and other revenue cuts and $3.6 trillion in relief for COVID-19, which reached the U.S. in the last year of his term. Biden’s $4.3 trillion in debt was equally split between COVID relief and other spending. (The figures don’t include the last half-year of Biden's term.)
Economists generally agree the post-COVID inflation surge was heavily driven by supply constraints as entire industries shut down, which was worsened by consumers spending more than usual on goods and companies emboldened to hike prices. Still, Bessent said, “we are in the process of deregulating, which will free the supply side, and we are cutting back the government spending.
“We are working to get these prices down every day,” Bessent later added, mentioning he plans to appoint an affordability czar in his department.
The Federal Reserve aims for 2% inflation; it sees that as a stable spot for prices. But we are not there yet. Plus, Fed Chair Jerome Powell has called for more caution when it comes to cutting interest rates, which suggests inflation isn’t in the rearview.
But back to tariffs. The tariffs on Canada and Mexico that the president previously put on hold in an eleventh-hour deal with their leaders are slated for Tuesday. Trump is still mulling over what those tariffs will be, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said. But we do know, based on Trump’s recent post on Truth Social, the president intends to double the tariffs he imposed on China and reciprocal tariffs are expected in April.
The simple explanation behind tariffs costing Americans more money is that companies could pass costs from the taxes they are forced to pay onto consumers. When asked again about the cost to households resulting from Trump’s tariffs and whether it would be zero, Bessent said, “We don’t know yet, because it’s path dependent, but what I can tell you is that I’m not worried about China.
“China will pay for the China tariffs, because their business model is exporting their way out of this inflation. They are the most imbalanced, unbalanced economy in modern times, and the idea that because of a tariff, that they would lower their production is wrong. They are going to continue flooding the market…They will eat any tariffs that go on,” he said.
How Mexico and Canada respond is to be determined. Bessent said Mexico offered to match U.S. tariffs on China, but Canada has not shared a plan.
