Bessent: “We’re Reordering The Global Economy”
POLITICO: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent spoke with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The two spoke after President Trump’s speech that riled U.S. allies. Burns and Bessent discussed tariffs, Greenland, America’s changing role in the global economy and much more.
DASHA BURNS, POLITICO: At USA House, at Davos, I mean, this is such a great moment to talk to you because the entire World Economic Forum has been buzzing about news that you and the administration have been making here. You know, for decades, the consensus at a place like this was globalization, free trade, open capital markets, and limited state intervention. This year, the mood and the conversation is a little bit different here. And back home, voters are focused on prices, on rent, on groceries. So let’s start broadly. The big question from all the conversations I’ve been a part of here has been whether the United States is rewriting the rules of the global economy. TREASURY SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: Well, I think we’re reordering the global economy. And I think we’ve seen that over the years, especially since the China shock in the early 2000s, that free trade was not fair trade. President Trump has talked about that for decades. And he’s made that one of his signature policies as he came back into the office. So as I like to say, he’s done trade deals, tax deals, and peace deals. And the reordering of trade with our partners has been a very important part of that. And we’re already seeing the benefits. We’re seeing trillions of dollars of investment flow back into the U.S. We are seeing substantial tariff income. And we are seeing the announcement of factories coming back, manufacturing coming back. Because at the end of the day, this is really about rebalancing. It’s about rebalancing global trade. And I would also say, if you want to geek out for a moment, for the third quarter GDP, trade actually was a positive contribution to GDP, which I think surprised a lot of people. It was something that we had, when I started in the investment business in the 80s and the 90s, trade was a positive contributor, had been subtracted because we had these trade deficits. And now it’s a positive.
