Bessent on Jobs Report: “We’re Not Going To Do Economic Policy Based On One Number”
NBC’s Kristen Welker grilled Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent about last month’s poor job growth report, Sunday on “Meet the Press.”
KRISTEN WELKER: Good morning. Thank you so much for being here. I do want to start right there on the jobs numbers. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told me in an interview the numbers look, quote, “weak.” And you just heard me say there that Moody’s chief economist called this a jobs recession. I want to give you the opportunity to respond to Mark Zandi. Do you see this as a jobs recession? SEC. SCOTT BESSENT: Well, Kristen, when I was here with you in April, there was a panic because the stock market had gone down. And you remained pretty calm. But a lot of other mainstream media people were in a complete lather over the stock market performance. President Trump held the views on tariffs. He was proven right. We had the quickest stock market recovery in history. We’re at new highs in August. And you know, we, look, we’re not going to do economic policy off of one number. We believe that good policies are in place that are going to create good high-paying jobs for the American people. Two, let’s look at the efficacy of this number. August is the noisiest month of the year. Typically the highest revisions come in August. That’s why it’s important that we have good data. Austan Goolsbee, who’s head of the Chicago Fed and probably the most partisan person at the Federal Reserve in leadership, came out and said, “I don’t know if these numbers were that weak. I don’t know if I’m going to vote for a cut in September because it may have something to do with the immigration deportation.” So this is why we need good data. Three, if in fact these numbers are true, it shows that President Trump was right about the Federal Reserve. They are too late. And because of the bad numbers, they likely would have been cutting in June. And if we believe the numbers. And four, I can tell you the one thing this administration is not going to do, and we are not going to let the Democrat media surrogates do is – during President Biden, President Harris’s campaign, they told the American people it’s a “vibe session.” You don’t understand how good you have it. President Trump was elected for change. And we are going to push through with the economic policies that are going to set the economy right. I believe by the fourth quarter we are going to see a substantial acceleration. KRISTEN WELKER: Okay, well, we’ll have you back definitely to check back in with you then. But let me drill down a little bit more on these numbers, Mr. Secretary. The president said that these tariffs are going to spark a manufacturing renaissance, he called it. But since he announced them in April, the U.S. has actually lost 42,000 manufacturing jobs. Are these numbers proof that the tariffs are failing to produce the manufacturing jobs that President Trump promised? SEC. SCOTT BESSENT: Again, Kristen, it’s been a couple of months. And with the manufacturing sector, as you know, you know, we can’t snap our fingers and have factories built. So what we are seeing is a record amount of investment intentions. We’ve seen a CapEx boom in the first half of the year. And I think that was actually held back. The One, Big Beautiful Bill, which has full expensing for factories and equipment, was passed on July 4th. Many companies were holding back then. So we are going to see construction jobs. And we are going to see manufacturing jobs. KRISTEN WELKER: But Mr. Secretary, you know, the economy did add nearly half a million manufacturing jobs under former President Biden. In this case since April, again, you’re actually losing manufacturing jobs. Is that problematic for your policy? SEC. SCOTT BESSENT: Well, a couple of things, Kristen. We’re going to get the revisions for last year next week. And there may be as big as an 800,000 jobs downward revision. Again, this would be the second downward revision. So I’m not sure what these people who collect the data have been doing that’s good. We need good data. Secondly, what we are seeing is the jobs that are being created are going to either native-born or legal Americans. Most of the jobs created under the Biden administration went to illegal aliens.
