Scott Bessent defended the tariffs in an interview with Tucker Carlson: "It's the beginning of a process, we're going to re-industrialize"

Scott Bessent defended the reciprocal tariffs of the Trump administration in an interview with Tucker Carlson. For more than an hour, the Treasury secretary discussed President Donald Trump's trade policy, particularly about his motivations and main objectives.

The president announced a wave of reciprocal tariffs during 'Liberation Day', prompting a drop in markups and much concern among world leaders. While some have already announced retaliation, others opted to contact the White House to attempt to negotiate.

In this context, Bessent spoke with the popular host for the Tucker Carlson Show, broadcast on X, YouTube and other platforms. Hours after its release, the episode had already surpassed two million plays.

"If the underlying economy is good, we're going to have a great stock market"

The Treasury secretary spoke of the drop in the markets following Trump's announcements, assuring that in reality "this market drop started with the announcement of DeepSeek, the Chinese artificial intelligence." "What's going on with the market, I would say it's more of a 'Mag 7' problem, not a MAGA problem," he added, referring to the shares of the group of technology companies comprising Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Nvidia, and Tesla.

In turn, Bessent told Carlson that the market would eventually settle in thanks to the strength of the "underlying economy." "And if the underlying economy is good, if taxes are stable, businesses have predictability, we have cheap and plentiful energy, if we deregulate, if we treat our workforce well, then we're going to have a great stock market," he continued.

On tariff logic, he asserted that they are mixing old ideas with new ideas, resulting in a process that is "transformational for the American economy, for the American worker, and for the new Republican alignment."

"So I think that this is the beginning of a process. We're going to re-industrialize, that we have gone to a highly financialiazed economy. We have stopped making things, especially a lot of the things that are relevant for national security," the Treasury secretary added.

"If tariffs are so bad, why do they have them?"

Later, Bessent referred to international reactions to the tariffs, "Many of our trading partners, including some of our allies, have not been good partners."

He even took aim at those who suggested that the cost of the tariffs was going to fall solely on U.S. consumers. "If tariffs are so bad, why do they have them? Or if the American consumer is going to pay all the tariff, then why do they care about tariff, right? Because they're going to eat them," he added.

On the geopolitical chessboard, the Treasury secretary asserted that the pandemic woke up the United States. "I think one of the few good outcomes from COVID was we had a beta test for what maybe a kinetic war with a large adversary could look like. And it turned out that these highly efficient supply chains were not strategically secure. So that we don't make our own medicines, that we don't make our own semiconductors, that we don't make our own ships anymore," he explained.

What is the ultimate goal of the tariffs?

On the "ultimate goal" behind the Trump Administration's tariff policy, Bessent summed it up as follows: "Get your factory here. That's the best solution to get away from a tariff wall. So move your factory from China, from Mexico, from Vietnam and bring it here."

"So, what we are doing, on one side, the President is reordering trade. On the other side, we are shedding excess labor in the federal government and bringing down federal borrowings. And then on the other side, that will give us the labor that we need for the new manufacturing, and we're going to re-lever the private sector," he added.

The math behind the tariffs

When it came to talking numbers, the Treasury secretary told Carlson that the tariffs would bring in between $300 billion and $600 billion annually for the United States.

As for how the Trump administration would use that money, Bessent said to "use that money to bring down our government deficit and keep taxes low," summing it up as "a very unique formula that hasn't been tried in this country for a long time."

"If you see a system that doesn't work, you have to be brave to change it"

Finally, Bessent remarked on the boldness of the president's economic plan, given that he chose to dodge the easy way out. "And if you look at a system that's not working, you've got to be brave to change it. So what wasn't working? Would have been really fun for me to come in and just keep issuing a lot of debt. And it's almost like a bodybuilder is taking steroids. Outside looks great. You're muscular. Inside, you're killing your vital organs," the Treasury secretary noted.

"The private sector, in essence, has been in recession during the Biden years, and this is an opportunity to right-size the federal government and unleash the private sector again because it's been hemmed down by excessive regulation and it's been crowded out by the government," he said.