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Home » Transcript of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s Interview on All-In Podcast

Transcript of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s Interview on All-In Podcast

Read the full transcript of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s interview on All-In Podcast, Mar 19, 2025.

TRANSCRIPT:

Introduction and Background

INTERVIEWER: Well, today’s a really important day. We’re joined by the 79th Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent. And this is an opportunity that we wanted to take as part of a longer form way of explaining to people not just how the economy works, but in a little bit more detail where are we in this moment in time? Where are we with deficits, tariffs, the budget, economic, monetary, fiscal policy? How do we make sure that we all understand the plan to make America great again? So Scott, thank you for joining us.

SCOTT BESSENT: Good. Thanks for having me.

INTERVIEWER: I actually want to start with let’s go back in the way back machine. So South Carolina, your father was a real estate developer. Tell us where the passion for finance came from.

SCOTT BESSENT: Well, I don’t know where finance in particular came from. As you mentioned, my dad was a real estate developer and he was kind of boom bust kind of guy. So I think that’s where my passion for risk management came from. But I was very fortunate. Went to Yale, wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. 1980 when I got there, probably you all can imagine this, but there used to be these things called punch cards. And we’d just gone. The Yale computer system had just gone from punch cards to screens.

I was going to think of being a computer science major, maybe a journalist because people actually used to read newspapers. So punch cards in newspapers from the Wayback Machine. And I got an internship just for an individual and he taught me the investment business really well.

INTERVIEWER: And who is that?

SCOTT BESSENT: His name is Jim Rogers.