NBC’s Kristen Welker Confronts Trump Treasury Sec on ‘Worst Week for the Market’ in Two Years — Treasury Sec Says He’s ‘Not Worried’
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was grilled by NBC’s Kristen Welker on Sunday morning about the state of the economy since President Donald Trump took office in January, noting that the market hit at a two-year low lst week.
Trump’s tariff threats have spooked investors, resulting in multiple rounds of selloffs. Last week, the stock market lost more than $4 trillion in value as investors watched their retirement plans sink.
On Sunday’s Meet the Press, Welker confronted Bissent on the investor sentiment after days of losses in the major trading indexes.
Welker noted that a majority of Americans recently said they disapproved ot Trump’s handling of the economy and that consumer sentiment was at a 29-month low. She also noted JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs each cut growth expectations for the near future..
She asked, “Why are all of those folks wrong and President Trump is right about his tariff policy?”
Bissent portrayed investors as shell-shocked by four years of the Biden administration’s economic policies and said that the public would eventually reject a “media narrative” that the economy was trending downward under Trump.
Welker continued to press him in the following exchange:
WELKER: And just to be clear, I mean, these are polls that are taken two months into President Trump’s presidency. But let’s talk about what happened in the stock market this week, worst week for the market in two years. Does that worry you, Mr. Secretary?
BESSENT: Not at all. I’ve been in the investment business for 35 years, and I can tell you that corrections are healthy. They’re normal. What’s not healthy is straight up, that you get these euphoric markets. That’s how you get a financial crisis. It would have been much healthier if someone had put the brakes on in ‘06, ‘07. We wouldn’t have had the problems in ‘08. So, I’m not worried about the markets. Over the long term, if we put good tax policy in place, deregulation and energy security, the markets will do great.
WELKER: I hear you say you’re not worried about the markets, but nearly 60% of Americans are invested in the markets. That’s their retirement savings. What do you say to Americans who have real concerns that their retirement savings may be in jeopardy?
BESSENT: I say that one week does not the market make. As Warren Buffet says, “Over the short term, the market is a voting machine. Over the long term, it’s a weighing machine.” And again, Kristen, it would have been very easy for us to come in, run these reckless policies that have been happening — happening before. We’ve got these large government deficits, 6.7% of GDP. We’ve never seen this when we’re not in war time, not in recession. We are bringing those down in a responsible way. We are going to have a transition, and we are not going to have a crisis.
Welker then asked Bessent, “Mr. Secretary, can you guarantee the American people here and now that there will be no recession on President Trump’s watch?”
Bessent replied, “Well, Kristen, you know that there – there are no guarantees, like, who would have predicted Covid? So I can predict that we are putting in robust policies that will be durable.”
Watch above via NBC News.
