This show proudly sponsored by Real American Freestyle Wrestling. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson, thanks so much for joining us. Brian, good to be with you. A lot of tension on Capitol Hill right now in the voter armor in 20 plus hours. Does this worry you?
Because we hear you're four votes away from Republicans having enough to pass.
Well, it would just be one.
So that would be their four no votes.
So we just need one more vote to get to 50. Vice President Vance is up on the Hill talking to his former colleagues in the Senate and is there to cast the tiebreaker if necessary. I'm not sure it will be. Lisa Murkowski says, I need a special carve-out because Alaska is unique for Medicaid to be able to get the additional funds. The parliamentarian says no, you know, you can't do that.
Evidently, she's been buttonholed and cornered by a few from Barrasso to Thune to Lindsey Graham, and they seem frustrated. What could you tell us about that about Alaska? Look, I've been in touch with the leadership, and everybody has special issues. And I think that we're all going to get that the Senate is going to get behind this. The Democrats have been trying to block The Republican progress.
That's why this has taken so long, and I am confident that we will get to yes this afternoon.
So it's all the 2017 tax cuts. They become permanent. And Wall Street seems to love that idea. But you're also adding to defense. You're adding to border security.
No taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime, no taxes on car loans.
So these are some of the changes that we're going to see. But yet, America, right now, for the most part, 38% approval rating on this bill. I know you don't do approval rating or do polls for a living, but why do you think the perception is so different than the way you feel about it?
Well, Brian, I think it's a misinformation in the media, the violence with which the Democrats have attacked this bill. And I think once the benefits start flowing through to the American people, that's why it's important to get in the president's desk July 4th, and then in 90 or 120 days, the American people are going to start feeling this great economic stimulus. I don't even want to talk about what happens if this doesn't pass. Right. 67% tax increase across the board.
And would you also say the Democrats had a chance for four years to change the tax rates? And they could have done that. There was no attempt to do that.
So they must have liked where the tax rates were. Look, Brian, all they wanted to do was spin, spin, spend. They blew out the deficit. When I was up on the Hill recently for my hearings, I felt like I was being lectured to on fire prevention from a bunch of arsonists. Like they increased the debt by trillions of dollars.
They left us with a mess, and we are going to fix it.
So Politico had a story last week saying that the problems other countries are having with the American side, your side, is that they don't know who had the hammer. Was it you, Lutnick? Was it the Treasury Secretary? Was it the Commerce Secretary? Or was it the trade representative?
Has there been a problem with getting one voice to speak for the country? One voice speaks for the country, and it's President Trump. And he has the final say on all these deals. And I think that that story in Politico was planted by some of our trading partners' trade delegations because they aren't. Coming with fulsome enough offers, and if they can't get the deal across the line, they want to shoot the messenger.
It's really the quality of the offers on their side. Everyone who's come with a good offer is going to get a deal.
So we saw what happened with Canada. They came out and said, We're going to start taxing your text companies. President said, Good, talks are off. They said, We are not going to do that. Talks are back on.
There was some optimism a week ago about Canada. Can you tell us where that the status of that trade deal is? I think that President, Prime Minister Kearney have agreed to try to get a trade deal done within 30 days. I thought it was unfortunate that the Canadians did a retroactive, retroactive Brian, digital service tax. That yesterday, on Monday, our great tech companies were going to have to pay $2 billion in back taxes under a different administration that under the Trudeau administration for these digital service taxes.
And those service taxes only fall on American companies. They're highly discriminatory. Right. So that pushback was effective. I saw the German Chancellor come out on Friday and said, enough of these trade talks.
I want to deal with in three days from the EU with the U.S. Did that rattle anybody's cages? Did you see progress after the new chancellor made those statements? Brian, one thing that's great to see is Germany reasserting its leadership. It's the largest economy in Europe.
They had what I would call turtled for a while under their previous administration.
Now they're coming out, they're meeting their NATO commitments, they are pushing the EU to try to get a trade deal done.
So it is very nice to see Chancellor Mertz asserting German leadership. Did anything change since that statement? I can tell you, things have changed in the past two, three weeks since the Mertz administration's come in. Are you against the letters that the President's going to send out if he doesn't have a deal by July 9th? The President is very good at giving us maximum leverage, and I can tell you the idea that many countries Reciprocal trade level or reciprocal tariff levels will revert to the April 2nd level, is giving the trade team a lot of leverage and bringing people to the table with their best and final offers.
I hear Japan, where the rubber hits the road, is cars. And also, he mentioned rice. He's like, you guys need rice, we got rice, you don't want to buy our rice. they don't want to sell American cars. And they seem to be even though we're tight allies, it seems to be at a breaking point.
President says talks are off. I'm not optimistic. Is Scott Besson optimistic? Brian where where At an interesting point with Japan. As you said, they're great allies, especially in defense in the Pacific, where we're aligned with values.
But they also have an election on July 20th that they're having to play to.
So perhaps going into the election, they're not able to come with the trade deals that we would expect.
So maybe after the election. When you look at the economy, people are all caught up in this bill. But you have another chance at reconciliation afterwards. And I'm wondering if that could be a promise. to help some senators that are worried about this bill.
Hey, we can go back again and offer some others in terms of cuts or changes. Brian, I think that especially in cost cutting, no one thinks that this is the final bill. As I've said many times, you and I have been talking about it for over a year. I'm a deficit hawk, and I think this is a down payment on right-sizing the bloated government. And we'll start here.
But the important thing: get the bill on the President's desk, and then we can talk. Talk about further spending controls from there.
So the deficit, the CBO says they're going to add $3 to $5 trillion to the deficit. What do they seem to have wrong with most Republican administrations, especially this one, that has Many, like you, exasperated by some of their conclusions. Like, in layman's terms, what do they, why do they see it different than you see it? I I'm looking at history, so they were $700 billion off, excluding inflation for President Trump's first tax bill. And what they don't do is they do what's called static scoring.
So no matter what, the economy grows at 1.8 percent. Most of the people who work at the CBO are Democrats, so maybe a Democratic Economy can't grow more than 1.8%. But that 1.8% does not move up or down whether this bill. Lapses and we have the largest tax increase in history, which would be a disaster. I think we get something between negative four and negative seven percent growth, or whether we pass this bill, growth accelerates, and we get something closer to three percent over a sustained period because growth changes the debt trajectory dramatically.
At the end of the day, on a Friday, when it's you and you're shutting the lights off, and the big beautiful bill has a verdict, and let's say it passes. What worries you the most that you find yourself thinking about the most, that you think you can affect the most over the next three and a half years? We have a big agenda from here. Obviously, peace deals, trade deals, tax deals have been the focus the past hundred days. But we've got a lot more we've got a lot more to go, Brian.
As you and I have talked about in the past, we want to make sure that Main Street Starts doing well, Wall Street's done great, and my goal if I walk out the door in January 2029 is that the rewards for the economy were evenly distributed. President Trump is committed to that. I was with him at the U.S. Steel Plant in Pittsburgh three weeks ago. And I have to tell you, the steel workers are behind President Trump because he knows that they are.
that they will do well under him, unlike the previous administrations. We're going to keep inflation low. We're going to make sure there are opportunities for everybody. We're going to bring back manufacturing and we're going to bring this deficit down. Inflation stopped, but it was high when you took over.
How do you get the prices to come down?
Well, there are two ways, Brian.
So, we're bringing down energy costs. Deregulation is the hidden tax.
So, as we bring down deregulation, that will substantially decrease household costs. And then, the third thing is what we are seeing is real wage growth for working families. Already. Already. Already.
So, biggest five-month increase in history. For a president's For the beginning of our president's term. And so we saw great wage growth for hourly workers, non-supervisory workers under President Trump's first term. I think we're going to see that again.
So, lastly, in April, when they made this announcement, a lot of famous business people said, Wow, this is crazy to have trade deals and basically try to cut trade deals with hund uh dozens of countries, and the market dropped like a rock. And now here we are three, four months later. You only have two deals, a framework and a UK deal done. But the market's hit an all time high. And there's some speculation and people saying, I maybe Trump was right and we were wrong.
Why did the market come all the way back, but yet so few deals have been done? And where did the experts who you hang out with, I mean, the best of the best, where did they get it wrong?
Well, Brian, I think I was with you right after it was done, and I urge people to stay calm, that these are the maximum tariff levels that. Countries can come negotiate them down. And there was just what I call tariff derangement syndrome. A huge number on the Democratic side, they became the Trump tariff, so they were automatically hated. The business community hadn't seen this in years.
And when you try something new and dramatic, people maybe get uncomfortable. But now we've seen that this is a great rebalancing for the American workers. Scott Besson, thanks so much for your time. It's just one of many, I hope dozens of interviews. And next time I'll come see you at your place.
Is that all right? We'd love to have you in the cash room at Treasury, Brian. All right. And hopefully, you'll have a big, beautiful bill to talk about soon. Uh I think on Friday.
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