‘That’s Bad Framing!’ Scott Bessent Snipes at Dana Bash for Asking About Tariff Refunds in Fiesty CNN Interview

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sniped at CNN’s Dana Bash Sunday for asking about refunds owed to U.S. businesses now that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Trump’s tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act are.

“I do want to start with the big question: Will you refund the roughly $134 billion in revenue taken by these emergency tariffs?” Bash asked.

“Well Dana, that’s not the big question,” Bessent began. “Let’s just level-set here. What the Supreme Court did was a very narrow reading of the president’s authority under the IEEPA tariffs.”

Bessent said the president has “other tariff authorities” that are now at the administration’s disposal.

“And Dana, when you say, ‘It’s a big question,’ that’s bad framing because the Supreme Court didn’t even address that. The Supreme Court remanded it down to a lower court. And we will follow what they say, but that could be weeks or months when we hear them. So the Supreme Court did not address refunds,” Bessent said.

“Sure,” Bash remarked, “they didn’t address refunds. That is clearly going to be up to to you, which is why —

“No, no, no, Dana, it is not up to me,” Bessent exclaimed. “It is not up to the administration; it is up to the lower court. Let’s just be clear on that.”

“Okay well, the Justice Department told a federal appeals court in this very case last year, ‘If tariffs imposed on plaintiffs during these appeals are ultimately held unlawful, then the government will issue refunds to plaintiffs.'”

Bessent repeated that he wasn’t going to “get out ahead of the court.”

“Yeah it’s just that as the Treasury secretary, it’s hard to believe that you don’t have an opinion or know where these revenues over $100 billion are going to go, or have an opinion on where they should go,” Bash said.

“Again, I had an opinion and the court did not agree with my opinion. So, Dana, I’m going to wait for the lower court opinion,” Bessent riterated.

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