Scott Bessent Defends Tariff Moves: 'President Trump Creates What I Would Call Strategic Uncertainty'

At a press briefing, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was asked about President Trump's tariff actions.

Transcript

00:00Secretary Brisson, thank you so much for being here this morning.

00:04You've talked about the importance of giving investors certainty

00:08when it comes to the market, yet the Trump administration is

00:12continuing to negotiate several complex trade deals in a very

00:16sort of compressed time frame. When do you expect you'll be

00:20able to give the market some certainty around those deals? Do you have a deadline?

00:24Is it the 90-day pause? What are we looking at here?

00:28I think one thing that has been a little

00:32disconcerting for the markets is President Trump creates what I would

00:36call strategic uncertainty in the negotiations, so he is more

00:40concerned about getting the best possible trade deals for the

00:44American people. We had four years of bad deals for decades

00:48of unfair trading, and we are going

00:52to unwind those and make them fair.

00:56What we are doing is we've created a process. I think the aperture

01:00of uncertainty will be narrowing, and as we start

01:04moving forward announcing deals, then there will be certainty, but

01:10certainty is not necessarily a good thing in negotiating.