Scott Bessent

The reflexive opposition to tariffs represents political ideology and advocacy, not considered economic thought.

— Scott Bessent

If the Trump tax cuts get extended or made permanent, I think there have to be pay-fors.

— Scott Bessent

Everyone asks me, what do you tell President Trump he should do? I don't have to tell Donald Trump he should do…

— Scott Bessent

I started out, our family was very affluent. My dad saw to it that we weren't. And now that I've made it…

— Scott Bessent

If you don't like Chinese economic policy, flooding the market with over production, you could put a sanction on them, or a…

— Scott Bessent

This IRA, this Inflation Reduction Act, which is Orwellian named, is a doomsday machine for the federal budget.

— Scott Bessent

It's insanity - this idea that Trump is inflationary is absurd.

— Scott Bessent

I went to Yale in 1980 and always through I'd like to come back to South Carolina but imagined I needed to…

— Scott Bessent

Voters who think Harris would bring a new outlook to the White House should think again.

— Scott Bessent

For too long, the conventional wisdom has rejected the use of tariffs as a tool of both economic and foreign policy. However,…

— Scott Bessent

I spent most of my life being quite private.

— Scott Bessent

On discretionary spending, we probably need to do some kind of a freeze except for defense.

— Scott Bessent

I think what's different about Trump is he's a businessman - and he understands economics.

— Scott Bessent

If a country with a free market trades with a managed economy, it in effect imports the industrial-policy choices of the managed…

— Scott Bessent

The inflation comes through either increasing the money supply or increasing the government spending, and that's what happened under Biden.

— Scott Bessent

Haley's life thus far has been an incredible American story: an immigrant family lands in rural South Carolina and produces a charismatic…

— Scott Bessent

I believe that if you have good economic policies, you're naturally going to have a strong dollar.

— Scott Bessent

In retrospect, 'Bidenomics' was a sad, simple and cynical economic plan: spend, spend, spend while opening up the U.S. southern border to…

— Scott Bessent

Overhauling the regulatory and supervisory environment will encourage more lending and reinvigorate banks.

— Scott Bessent

The failure of Bidenomics is clear.

— Scott Bessent

We are going to have to have some kind of a grand global economic reordering. I'd like to be a part of…

— Scott Bessent

The artificial intelligence, quantum-computing and space-based weapons systems for the conflicts of tomorrow must be designed now.

— Scott Bessent

I was the only one in the dorm who was heartbroken when George Wallace decided not to run for president.

— Scott Bessent

President Trump is right that actual free trade is desirable. It might seem counterintuitive from a free market perspective, but he is…

— Scott Bessent

Prior to the 16th Amendment, which authorized the individual income tax, tariffs had been one of the federal government's chief sources of…

— Scott Bessent