Transcript of Leavitt, Treasury Sec. Bessent Hold Press Briefing on Trump’s First 100 Days

More than 100 countries have already come to the table looking to offer more favorable terms for America and our people. There has never been a president who has created his own leverage like this president, and we are just getting started.

Republicans in Congress are getting very close to passing President Trump’s one big beautiful bill, which will include the largest tax cuts in American history, strong border security measures, major military advancements, dramatic deregulation, and common-sense spending reforms. As President Trump has said before, the best is yet to come.

For more on President Trump’s economic successes so far and the plans ahead, I want to pass it off to our incredible Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is here today, and we will open it up to questions.

In our new media seat, we have Brendan Pearson, the financial services reporter for Punchbowl News. Punchbowl News covers power, people, and politics based in Washington, D.C., laser-focused on Capitol Hill, the politics of legislating, founded in 2021, and it is the first newsletter that Capitol Hill and the White House reads every morning in the middle of the day and throughout the evening. Thanks for being here with us, and we’ll start with you today.

Q&A Session

REPORTER: Thanks so much for being here. I have a question for Secretary Bessent. On tariffs, the president said over the weekend that we are hoping that maybe tariff revenues could replace income tax, but we also keep hearing about the deals that the administration is pursuing. So my question is, what is the White House’s ultimate objective here? Do you want to have long-term tariff revenue or deals that might reduce those tariffs?

SECRETARY BESSENT: I think it’s a combination of both. So we’re going to take in long-term tariff revenue. We put a process in place. We have 18 important trading relationships. We will be speaking to all of those partners, or at least 17 of them, over the next few weeks. Many of them have already come to Washington. What President Trump is referring to is the ability for tariff revenue to give income tax relief, and I think there’s a very good chance that we will see this in the upcoming tax bill. The president campaigned on no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime, and the restoring interest deductibility for American-made autos. So tariff income could be used for tax relief on all those immediately.

REPORTER: So you think that there is a role for significant tariff revenue in U.S. fiscal policy?

SECRETARY BESSENT: I think that it is something that got put away a long time ago, and I think that tariffs will bring back American manufacturing and generate substantial revenues.

REPORTER: On manufacturing, we’ve seen some pretty grisly surveys this month from the Philly Fed, which saw the biggest drop since May of 2020, and the Dallas Fed, similar plunging outlook, poor shipping orders. What are American manufacturers not understanding about your push for onshoring in the U.S.?

SECRETARY BESSENT: Well, I think I was in the investment business 35 years, and I learned to ignore the survey data and look, or the surveys, look at the actual data, and the actual data…

SECRETARY BESSENT: The job data is good. Americans keep spending, and as Karoline said, we have these incredible commitments to bring manufacturing back onshore with record investment by domestic corporations and foreigners who want to come into the U.S.

REPORTER: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. The Chinese continue to say that the U.S. and China are not engaged in any consultation or negotiation on tariffs. You recently said you’ve talked to your counterpart, but more about traditional things like financial stability, so can you clarify, is the administration talking to Beijing specifically about tariffs or not?

SECRETARY BESSENT: Well, we’re not going to talk about who’s talking to whom, but I think that, you know, over time we will see that the Chinese tariffs are unsustainable for China. I’ve seen some very large numbers over the past few days that show if these numbers stay on, Chinese could lose 10 million jobs very quickly, and even if there is a drop in the tariffs, that they could lose 5 million jobs. So remember that we are the deficit country. They sell almost five times more goods to us than we sell to them, so the onus will be on them to take off these tariffs. They’re unsustainable for them.

REPORTER: And they are saying you guys are not talking about it, so is that true?

SECRETARY BESSENT: They have a different form of government. They’re playing to a different audience, so I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty again of who’s talking to whom, but as I said, I believe for the Chinese, these tariffs are unsustainable.

REPORTER: Very quickly, two days ago, you didn’t know if President Trump had spoken to Xi Jinping. Do you know now?

SECRETARY BESSENT: Again, I would say Karoline and I have a lot of jobs around the White House. Running the switchboard is not one of them.

Trade Negotiations and Market Certainty

REPORTER: Secretary Bessent, thank you so much for being here this morning. You’ve talked about the importance of giving investors certainty when it comes to the market, yet the Trump administration is continuing to negotiate several complex trade deals in a very sort of compressed time frame. When do you expect you’ll be able to get the market certainty around those deals? Do you have a deadline? Is it the 90-day pause? What are we looking at here?

SECRETARY BESSENT: Good question, and I think one thing that has been a little disconcerting for the markets is, you know, President Trump creates what I would call strategic uncertainty in the negotiations, so he is more concerned about getting the best possible trade deals for the American people. We had four years of bad deals for decades of unfair trading, and we are going to unwind those and make them fair. What we are doing is we’ve created a process. I think the aperture of uncertainty will be narrowing, and as we start moving forward announcing deals, then there will be certainty, but you know, certainty is not necessarily a good thing in negotiating.

REPORTER: There were reports on the administration sort of walking back a little bit on the auto tariffs. Can you sort of just elaborate on that decision there, and what we can expect going forward, and why sort of the shift in this auto tariff?

SECRETARY BESSENT: Well, President Trump has had meetings with both domestic and foreign auto producers, and he’s committed to bringing back auto production to the U.S., so we want to give the automakers a path to do that quickly, efficiently, and create as many jobs as possible.

Supply Chain Concerns and Asian Trade Partners

REPORTER: Thank you, Secretary. Back on China, does the administration anticipate supply chain shocks or supply shocks coming now that cargo shipments from China are significantly down, and if so, are there being plans, or are there plans in the process of how to address that?

SECRETARY BESSENT: I wouldn’t think that we would have supply chain shocks, and I think retailers, they have managed their inventory in front of this. You know, I speak to dozens of companies, sometimes daily, but definitely weekly, and they know that President Trump is committed to fair trade, and have planned accordingly.

REPORTER: And then second question, can you outline the timeline for when you think some of these deals, particularly with your Asian countries, like India, Japan, South Korea, you may have an announcement?

SECRETARY BESSENT: I’m glad you brought up our Asian trading partners and allies. They have been the most forthcoming in terms of doing the deals. As I mentioned, Vice President Vance was in India last week. I think that he and Modi made some very good progress, so I could see some announcements on India. I could see the contours of a deal with the Republic of Korea coming together, and then we’ve had substantial talks with the Japanese.

REPORTER: Secretary Bessent, just continuing on the path of sort of like progress, you said yesterday, I think, that it could happen as early as this week or possibly next week. Can you give us a bit of a time table and then I wanted to ask about South Korea specifically. They said that they probably won’t be able to make a comprehensive deal until early July because of their elections. Japan also has elections and to what extent are domestic factors complicating your efforts? Canada just had an election. Are you seeing that you might have to think about delaying the 90 days?

SECRETARY BESSENT: Well I would actually take the opposite tack that I think from our talks that these governments actually want to have the framework of a trade deal done before they go into elections to show that they have successfully negotiated with the United States. So we are finding that they are actually much more keen to come to the table, get this done and then go home and campaign on it.

REPORTER: I’m sorry, did you have a comment on whether something could happen this week or next week for a deal?

SECRETARY BESSENT: Again I think that we are very close on India. And India, just a little inside baseball, in India in a funny way is easier to negotiate with than many other countries because they have very high tariffs and lots of tariffs so it’s much easier to confront the direct tariffs. When as we go through these unfair trade deals that have been put in over decades, the non-tariff trade barriers can be much more insidious and also harder to detect. So a country like India which has the posted and ready tariffs, it’s much easier to negotiate with them. So I think the India negotiations are moving well.

Amazon’s Tariff Display and Consumer Impact

REPORTER: Hi Mr. Secretary, so it was reported this morning that Amazon will soon display a little number next to the price of each product that shows how much the Trump tariffs are adding to the cost of each product. So isn’t that a perfect crystal clear demonstration that it’s the American consumer and not China who is going to have to pay for these policies?

KAROLINE LEAVITT: I will take this since I just got off the phone with the president about Amazon’s announcement. This is a hostile and political act by Amazon. Why didn’t Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years? And I would also add that it’s not a surprise because as Reuters recently wrote, Amazon has partnered with a Chinese propaganda arm. So this is another reason why Americans should buy American. It’s another reason why we are on-shoring critical supply chains here at home to shore up our own critical supply chain and boost our own manufacturing.

REPORTER: Is Jeff Bezos still a Trump supporter?

KAROLINE LEAVITT: Look, I will not speak to the president’s relationships with Jeff Bezos, but I will tell you that this is certainly a hostile and political action by Amazon. And Secretary if you have anything to add.

SECRETARY BESSENT: Yeah, I would also add that bringing down the terrible Biden inflation has been a priority for the first hundred days of the Trump administration, and President Trump has done a great job of leading that since January 20th. Interest rates, mortgage rates are down, gasoline and energy prices are down, we’re expecting further decreases. And as Karoline said, the big tax on consumers that goes unnoticed is regulation, and we are deregulating and bringing that down. So from a household income point of view, we would expect real purchasing increases. We’ve seen them over the first hundred days and we would expect that to accelerate. We are doing peace deals, trade deals, tax deals and deregulating, and the deregulation is a longer lead time but I think by the third and fourth quarters that’s really going to kick in.

REPORTER: Thank you Karoline. A question for you and Secretary Bessent. We talked a lot about volatility and threatening the marketplace and the president has stated all along he’s more concerned…

REPORTER: About mainstream America, the American worker. You just talked about deregulation and this entire fair trade and reciprocals. What is your message to the American people in terms of letting them get through this disturbance and the outcome being greater and a greater good for the American worker, the American people, the American families?

KAROLINE LEAVITT: I would say trust in President Trump. There’s a reason he was re-elected to this office. It’s because of the historic success of his economic formula in the first term and as I laid out at the beginning of the briefing and the secretary has talked about and the president talks about every day. There’s a proven formula that works. Massive deregulation, energy independence and tax cuts which are coming and the secretary is working very hard on that with our counterparts on Capitol Hill. If you want to talk about that, that’s a huge deal to put more money back into the pockets of hard-working Americans.

As for the fair trade deals the president is trying to negotiate, he’s not just righting the wrong of the mess that he inherited from the past four years of the Biden administration. This is a mess that has been created for the past four decades that has sold out the middle class that has moved jobs overseas. You think about our heartland, middle America, what towns used to look like, what they look like today. President Trump wants to restore the golden age and it’s a process to do that and that process is underway but he’s put together a fantastic trade team. Secretary Bessent, Secretary Lutnick, Jamison Greer all working incredibly hard on this effort 24-7, but tax cuts are coming and that’s key. And Mr. Secretary, why don’t you talk a little bit about that.

SECRETARY BESSENT: Yeah, so it’s really a three-legged stool in the economic policy. It’s trade, it’s tax and it’s deregulation. So we are in the midst of addressing as Karoline said these long-term trade imbalances. The tax bill is going much better than I would have thought when I took office on January 28th and that’s through President Trump’s leadership that Speaker Johnson, Leader Thune are united.

Speaker Johnson, we had a very good meeting yesterday with somebody called the Big Six, NEC Director Kevin Hassett, myself, Speaker Johnson, Leader Thune, Committee Chairman Jason Smith and Senator Crapo and the tax bill is moving forward. It is going to give permanence to the 2017 Tax Cuts and Job Act which will back to the question on certainty. It will give American business certainty, it will give American people certainty and then President Trump is also adding the things for working Americans that I talked about earlier: no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on social security, making auto payments deductible so that will substantially address the affordability crisis.

And the other thing that I would note and back to data is that the Vanguard, one of the largest money management firms in America said that over the past 100 days 97% of Americans haven’t done a trade and in fact individual investors have held tight while institutional investors have panicked. So individual investors trust, individual investors trust President Trump.

Auto Tariffs and Trade Relief

REPORTER: Can you detail for us exactly what we should expect as far as relief on the auto tariff strike and then further Mr. Secretary, should we expect other industries to also get relief the way we’ve now seen for auto and tech as well?

SECRETARY BESSENT: I’m not going to go into the details of the auto tariff relief but I can tell you that it will go substantially toward reshoring American auto manufacturing and again the goal here is to bring back the high quality industrial jobs to the U.S. President Trump is interested in the jobs of the future not the jobs of the past. We don’t need to necessarily have a booming textile industry like where I grew up again but we do want to have precision manufacturing and bring that back.

And another important, very important function of this that does not get talked about enough is national security. President Trump, his overriding concern and belief is that economic security is national security, national security is economic security and we saw during COVID that our supply chains got cut off and we need to bring back a lot of those supply chains whether it’s in semiconductors, medicines, the steel and we have to onshore those so it’s a combination of making trade free and fair and remedying this gaping national security hole that he was left with.

KAROLINE LEAVITT: And if you could, I would just add again the President will sign the executive order on auto tariffs later today and we will release it as we always do. Go ahead.

European Union Negotiations

REPORTER: Secretary, any updates on the negotiation with the European Union and is it hard to negotiate with the European Union?

SECRETARY BESSENT: Pardon?

REPORTER: Do you have any updates on the negotiation with the European Union?

SECRETARY BESSENT: I’m more involved in the Asian negotiations. My observation would be goes all the way back to Henry Kissinger’s statement, “When I call Europe who do I call?” So we’re negotiating with a lot of different interests. Some of the European countries have put on an unfair digital service tax on our big internet provider. France and Italy, other countries, Germany and Poland don’t have that. So we want to see that unfair tax of one of America’s great industries removed. So it’s going to be a give and take. So they have some internal matters to decide before they can engage in an external negotiation.

Business Uncertainty and Investment

REPORTER: Thanks Karoline. Mr. Secretary, so contacts I have in the business community say that they’re basically frozen for long term investment because of the uncertainty around tariffs. How long do you think President Trump has to make a deal before there’s damage to the economy?

SECRETARY BESSENT: Look, I think that what we’re seeing is that business leaders, they’ve gone into a pause and I think we’re going to give them great certainty on this tax bill. And I think over the next couple of weeks, as I said, we have 18 important trading relationships. We’ll put China to the side, 17 are in motion. And then as I said yesterday, I think there’s a very good chance we’re going to get this tax bill done. And the tax bill is going to be very powerful for domestic U.S. investment.

So what we are going to do, one of the most powerful parts of President Trump’s 2017 tax bill was full expensing of equipment. We are going to make that, as President Trump said in his speech to Congress, that will be retroactive to January 20th. The other thing that we are looking to add is full expensing for factories. So bring your factory back. You can fully expense the equipment and the building. We will couple that with deregulation, cheap energy, and regulatory certainty. And that will continue to make the U.S. the greatest destination for domestic and foreign investment.

REPORTER: The President said that world leaders would like to meet with him in Rome and Vatican City about trade. Other than President Zelensky, who did the President meet with about trade and when could we get some of those deals?

Closing Remarks

KAROLINE LEAVITT: The President met with President Zelensky, as you know, which we talked about. And the President continues to be engaged with his fellow leaders around the world in the European Union. You’ve seen many of them visit the White House.

I want to harp on, in closing, the point the Secretary just made. On the campaign trail, the President promised the American public that he was going to make America the best country in the world to do business again. The lowest taxes, lowest regulation, lowest energy costs of anywhere in the world. And if you do business in the United States, you won’t pay a tariff, you won’t pay a price. That’s not just good for companies around the world, but it’s good for the American worker. That’s what this team is focused so hard on every day.

We have work to do. The golden age of America is underway. But as I pointed out in the beginning, there’s a lot of reason for the American consumer, the American CEO, the American small business owner to be confident and optimistic about this President and where we’re headed.

So you will hear more from the President himself later this evening. He is traveling to Michigan, as you all know. He’ll make a stop at the Air Force Base with Governor Whitmer. And then we will head to a rally tonight. We’ll hear more from him directly. So we’ll see you in Michigan. Thank you, guys.

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