Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was not in the mood to play defense on Sunday when he appeared on NBC’s “Meet The Press.” Sitting across from host Kristen Welker, Bessent flipped the script on a string of gloomy questions about the Trump Administration’s economic policies, particularly tariffs, and turned them into a case for optimism.
Welker began by pointing to the latest jobs report, which came in weaker than expected, and pressed Bessent on whether tariffs were failing to deliver the manufacturing boom Trump promised. Bessent was quick to push back. “Kristen, it’s been a couple of months, and with the manufacturing sector, as you know, you know, we can’t snap our fingers and have factories built,” he explained. “What we’re seeing is a record amount of investment intentions. We’ve seen a capital expenditure boom in the first half of the year, and that was actually held back. The one big beautiful bill, which has full expensing for factories and equipment, was passed on July 4th. Many companies were waiting. So we’re going to see construction jobs and we’re going to see manufacturing jobs.”
When Welker countered by noting that manufacturing jobs expanded under Biden, Bessent went after the credibility of the data itself. He pointed to large downward revisions that had already been applied to past Biden-era reports and suggested more were coming. “We’re going to get the revisions for last year next week, and there may be as big as an 800,000 job downward revision again. This would be the second downward revision. So I’m not sure what these people who collect the data have been doing. It’s good. We need good data.” He also added that most of Biden’s so-called gains went to illegal aliens, while Trump’s policies are ensuring jobs for native-born and legal Americans.
The secretary further brushed aside Welker’s insistence that tariffs would force companies to raise prices. “I made a good career trading against Goldman Sachs,” he quipped, after Welker cited the bank’s predictions of inflationary effects.
“Goldman Sachs says 86% of the tariffs have been paid by American businesses & consumers. Do you acknowledge that these tariffs are a tax on Americans?” – NBC
“No I don't.” – Scott Bessent
— Spencer Hakimian (@SpencerHakimian) September 7, 2025
Bessent also challenged her framing of the economy as bleak. “Kristen, if things are so bad, why was the GDP 3.3 percent? Why is the stock market at a new high? Because, you know, with President Trump, we care both about big companies and small companies, and you’re quoting big companies, but the big company index, the S&P, is at a new high.”
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1964687961305313335
It was a combative performance that reflected both the administration’s confidence in its economic agenda and Bessent’s willingness to take the fight to a media establishment eager to declare it a failure.
Like the rest of the MSM talking heads, Welker spins everything to bash Trump. Across the MSM, I have watched dozens of supposed “experts” (that I have never seen before) who shriek that Trump’s tariffs have destroyed America’s economy, and thrown tens of millions of Americans out of work.
Oh and he has supposedly plunged the world economy into total chaos!
Dems and the MSM cannot cite any facts, but that does not slow them down.