LIVE: White House Press Briefing with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent

Thank you.

I should have

I know.

Honestly,

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One minute until the briefing.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Good afternoon everyone. Good afternoon. I'd like to say it's a pleasure to be here today. This is my warm-up for my Senate and House hearings next week. So, I don't want anyone yelling reclaim my time. So, let's start out with Trump accounts. Trump accounts, I believe, are the most important benefit for young people since the GI Bill. Today, the app is now available on all major platforms, bringing the president's vision directly to American homes. Nearly 6 million American children have been signed up for Trump accounts which will launch on July 4th. And I would encourage all of you to go to trumpaccount.gov to sign up. We had a historic tax filing season. We passed the largest tax cuts in American history. The average refund this filing season is nearly $3,300, an 11% increase from last year. And importantly, very importantly, 62 million returns. 44% claimed at least one of the president's signature tax cuts. No tax on tips, no tax on overtime, the reduced taxes on social security benefits. 85% of our seniors paid no taxes, and the auto deductibility on loans for American cars. And to remind everyone, Democrats, every Democrat voted against those programs. We've had sustained and resilient GDP growth. Real GDP has risen 2.6% over the past four quarters. Atlanta Fed's GDP now predicts 3.8% for this quarter, second quarter. The US energy dominance part of our resilience stems from our energy dominance. Natural gas is down. It's my belief and the futures market is showing us. Oil will be lower than pre-conflict levels. We are more resilient to energy price fluctuations due to President Trump's energy dominance and deregulatory agenda. The United States is now the world's largest energy exporter. The United States has never exported so much energy or produced so much energy. Main Street Prosperity, the average 401k, is up almost $30,000 since President Trump's inauguration. President Trump RX has already saved Americans over $600 million. I'm sure all of you will want to report on that. And the unemployment rate remains low at 4.3%. So, with that, I'm happy to ask questions. I will mention the three weeks ago, I got an honorary degree from the University of South Carolina. So, if you really want to get a question, you can call me Dr. Bessent.

Well, that's a great question because 38% of Americans have no exposure to equities. They don't share in the great innovation, the machine that is the American economy or great capital markets that drives our prosperity. So, if your child is born during President Trump's administration, Treasury puts in $1,000 as a seed investment. We've also created six learning pods so you can go online to the app that went up today and learn. And I think that this is going to be you know I've been a big proponent of financial literacy and I think this is going to be one of the greatest real time financial literacy educations in history because it won't be oh like there's a street in New York called Wall Street. This is what I don't really understand what happens there. American family is going to be able to look on their phone every day and see and you know I think it's going to drive people to try to understand what they've got here. I think we're going to create a generation of shareholders.

Well first of all PCE today month over month was 0.2 which was we're looking at decimal points but the estimate was 0.3 so one month doesn't a trend make and what we've seen is actually, oil prices are down about 10% in May. There are almost 2,000 ships waiting to come out of the Gulf. And I think the oil market is going to be very well supplied on the other side of this and that we could see prices come down very quickly. We saw the UAE leave OPEC. So I would expect on the other side of this that gasoline prices will follow on the table.

The teams have been going back and forth and President Trump has made it very clear. He talked about it at the cabinet meeting that he has several red lines and Iran has to turn over their highly enriched uranium. They cannot pursue a nuclear weapon and the Strait of Hormuz back to your question on energy has to free transit navigation of the seas has to be free and open as it was before. So he's not going to take a bad deal. He's going to make a great deal for the American people.

Well, again as Treasury Secretary, I have two mandates for US currency. At present no living person can be on US currency and the currency must stay in God We Trust. So right now there is proposed legislation in front of the House and in front of the Senate to change the first requirement so that a living person Donald J. Trump could be on a $250 bill. So it's all in the hands of the it's all up on Capitol Hill. So at Treasury we prepare things in advance. So we have prepared in advance that if the legislation is passed but we will stick to the law.

Again, I think the president wanted to punctuate freedom of navigation in the strait. I had a call with the Omani ambassador this morning and he assured me that there were no plans for tolling the strait. As he said, our countries have had 200 years of good relations. He wants to have another 200 more. And you know, I told him that this was a non-starter and he did not want to risk either the Omani individuals or Omani financial institutions getting sanctioned.

Again, I'm not going to preview the deal, but I would think that the things would go very slowly in terms of that. So, you know, we'll see.

Again it is a multifaceted agreement and nothing is going to be on the table until we see the strait open and the Iranians agree that they have to turn over the highly enriched uranium and that they can't have a nuclear program and to be clear here that this administration President Trump has done something that no other administration is able to do. We have gotten the Iranians to talk about their nuclear program and to perhaps commit to not having one. That has never happened before. It had been off the table. So I think when you look at the results of the kinetic action of our economic pressure, it has worked to bring them to the table and have a discussion on this.

Again, everything depends on what the president wants to do. And President Trump is not going to make a bad deal for the American people, for the US, and he was very clear at the cabinet meeting yesterday what he wants.

No, it's you.

Well, so this administration has been very clear there will be no central bank digital currency which I think would be the first step toward tracking. So we have taken that off the table. We've passed stable coin legislation with bipartisan support and the clarity act is now up on the hill and I think it has bipartisan support and the most important thing we can do is to make digital assets come into the United States, make the US the home. Our regulation, our best practices are what will ensure good standards for these. When you look at digital assets, all the nonsense that happens, all the things you read about, that's because it's the wild wild west offshore. So we got to bring it on shore. So I would encourage the House and the Senate to get clarity done.

Good. So, thank you. Thank you for the question. This is going to be the only question I'll take on this matter today. So, there's ongoing litigation, so it'd be inappropriate for me to comment. President Trump is a great American who has endured more than 10 years of non-stop harassment and weaponization from the federal and state government actors. A bad actor at the IRS leaked more than 400,000 tax returns, including the Trump family, all the employees, and that's how we got here now. No American should be targeted for political reasons, and every citizen deserves fair treatment and full protection of the law. The Department of Justice represented Treasury and the IRS in this matter and I'm going to have to refer any questions to acting attorney general Todd Blanch. So,

Well I think again I believe that we will get through this challenging period now of higher prices on the other side of this. I've said publicly that I think we'll be back to substantial disinflation but most importantly I think we've got the new Fed now. It's a new day at the Fed. The Treasury Secretary and the Fed chair have lunch or breakfast every week. I had my first breakfast with Chair Warf this morning and I believe that he will do the right thing to balance inflation and growth.

Yes. So, I'd like to ask you if you could provide a little more detail on what you're doing to shut down Iran's airlines and also on sanctions relief. A senior administration official briefed reporters over the weekend that sanctions relief will be commensurate with nuclear concessions, but at some point if the enriched uranium is given up, should we expect pallets of cash to be flown to Iran? Could you describe how that looks?

Well, a couple of things on the airlines. One thing that we're not going to do is restrict movement for religious reasons. So Iranians who want to make the pilgrimage to Mecca or Medina will be allowed. We will also allow valid humanitarian reasons. But the other thing we can do is that when these airlines fly, they have to be refueled. They sell tickets. They pay landing fees. Anyone who accepts those we will sanction. So they should be very clear that these state-owned Iranian airlines, they are outlaws and cannot do this.

I again it's always a mistake to get out ahead of the president. So it is all going to be the president's decision. I think that we can see that the president very clearly stated his three: open the strait, highly enriched uranium, no nuclear program. So

That if there can be no deal without those, why would there be a deal without those?

Well, the GAO numbers, not my numbers, believe that there's about 500 billion a year of fraud. So, could we very quickly get 250 billion of that? The budget deficit is approximately 1.8 trillion. So, that would reduce the deficit substantially. If we could get that 500 billion number, you know, I think it would engender confidence. You'd probably also go into a virtuous cycle as the budget deficit narrowed, interest rates would go down. No one reports it, but last year we actually had a fiscal contraction. Just to remind everyone, we inherited the worst budget deficit in history when we were not in a recession or not at war, 6.7%. We brought that down to about 5.5 or 5.4% this year. I think we'd stay on a good trajectory.

We have great collaboration between all the labs that have the large language models, between the US government and the labs. So,

I haven't seen the president today.

Again, I believe we've already seen oil prices come down substantially. We are pumping more oil than we've ever seen before. And I, as I said, these are short-term challenges that we will get over and I think we'll move forward.

No, no, in the white.

So, you're calling President Trump a statesman. You're saying that he is taking a statesmanlike position that he has a core belief and he believes that the most important thing is for Iran never to have a nuclear weapon. So I believe both things can be true that we can do well in the midterms that we perhaps have the makings of a deal here and I believe that and look the economy it is challenging now but unemployment is still low, tax refunds were high and consumer spending is still quite high. So in my private business over the years, I always looked at what were consumers doing, not what they were saying. And I'm in constant contact with the banks, and every income quintile is still doing well.

Again, the president doesn't do it. The House and the Senate have to do it.

I don't think it could be clear.

No, I think it just means they've run out of things on the food chain.

Again, with the Iranian government, we did not have regime change, but we changed the regime. As President Trump said at the cabinet meeting, as we've said other times, the first layer of leadership was eliminated, the second layer and we're now at the third layer. And the way to think about it is the Iranian government such as it is is three pillars. It is the elected government, it is the IRGC, and it is the clerics. And they are having trouble communicating. So, we are being patient. We do not have unlimited patience. President Trump always prefers a peace deal. So everything we have done thus far has been defensive and at present that is what we will continue doing. But if President Trump doesn't think he can get a peace deal then kinetic action is back.

Again, you know we see that the market I believe is very well supplied right now. The market seems to be going into balance for itself. So I think that as the strait opens up we're going to see this burst of ships come out. So we may actually see how quickly can it be refined, how quickly can it get to its destination.

So people could look over my shoulder, photograph them, and think they got a scoop.

Again, I think we got to get to the deal before we get to the other side.

No, in the pink.

Again, that's going to be up to the Cuban government that they can go up, they can go down. We've tried to get humanitarian aid in and the regime rejected it. So because they wanted to go through their corrupt system. So they could go up, they could go down. Secretary Rubio is doing a fantastic job of managing this process and we at Treasury are working with him.

It is ongoing. We've made substantial progress and I think in the weeks and months ahead, we are going to have a lot to report. One thing that did go underreported that I would point out to all of you is the IRS is now giving guidance on the form 990 which nonprofits have to file and we are going to encourage or demand that nonprofits know their grant recipients. So if a grant recipient is violent, if they are suppressing people's rights, then you are responsible for that and I think that's a very good first step.

Well, so lower academic literature would tell you lower savings rate can mean one of two things. The kind of the doomer view that you took or that people have more confidence or it could be you know something else because you know for instance stock market gains or 401k gains might not show up in savings so they're looking at that think that they can draw down their household savings.

Again, we're working very closely with the large language model labs. They've been excellent partners and we are going to get a solution that solves for the maximum calculus. What we want to do, the US is the AI leader in the world. We're an AI superpower. China is second. They are trailing substantially. We want to make sure that we keep that lead. So, we are working on the exact calculus between innovation and safety and we want to optimize for that.

So, you in the glasses.

In the glasses, no. No, you don't have glasses on. You want to go?

I am sure that Mr. Alito follows all legal and ethical guidelines and I can assure you that at Treasury, we follow all the legal and ethical guidelines.

I want you to call me doctor, so I only get one.

You know, I don't really understand this Washington Post article that who hears from the Post. Yeah. Terribly written, terribly edited because basically what it says is that Treasury is following the law and that we've created the bill and that it's up to Congress, but that we follow the bill and it's up to I didn't really understand what the story was.

Yeah, of course. But we prepare for everything if it gets passed. Just like we were ready 6 months in advance for the one big beautiful bill for tax guidance so we have to prepare in advance. You can't draw something up the day before.

Look, I think it has I think that it's bifurcated that do you think we should have a 250th anniversary celebration?

Kaitlin, it's not happening anyway. It's happening because it's being funded by private citizens, by the federal government, by state governments, by municipal governments to celebrate our country. And I don't think that there's anything dishonorable about having the president of the United States, the person who was president of the United States on the 250th anniversary bill.

I will not be taking any other questions mean I will not be taking any other question on the sanctions sir given the scale of the assault from Russia on Kyiv in recent days and the fact that diplomacy seems to have settled down. There is no diplomatic talks happening right now between Russia, Ukraine or the US. What about sanctions? Is the US considering sanctions on Russia at this time?

Well, the US this administration has put the hardest sanctions on Russia of any country. So let's review how the sanctions regime has gone since the Russian action on Ukraine. Biden administration put on very what I would call mild sanctions because they were worried about gasoline prices going up into an election. It would be the unstatesmanlike sanctions that probably the worst national security adviser in the history of the country, Jake Sullivan, in an act of bravery on his way out the door in January. They raised the sanction level on behalf of the Trump administration. We let those in situ when we took office. Fast forward to October and President Trump instructed me to sanction the two largest Russian oil companies, Lukoil and Rosneft, which we did. No other government has done that. So, no one has done more sanctions than the Trump administration on Russian oil.

Yeah. So, yeah. No, no, no. No, no. Here, here. Who wants to own this gray hair? No. Gray hair.

Well, maybe you do.

I had breakfast with Chair Powell 41 times, and I never did that.

There's no cure for stupid.

Thank you all.