{"id":150746,"date":"2025-06-02T00:19:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-02T00:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/150746\/"},"modified":"2025-06-02T00:19:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-02T00:19:12","slug":"numbers-are-the-best-in-4-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/150746\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Numbers are the best in 4 years’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent<\/a> took a victory lap Sunday over recent inflation numbers that show a key benchmark hitting a four-year low, hailing it as vindication against the naysayers who predicted President Trump\u2019s tariffs would cause prices to soar. <\/p>\n

Bessent gently dinged CBS\u2019 \u201cFace the Nation\u201d anchor Margaret Brennan for asking him skeptical questions in March about studies by the Peterson Institute and other groups that predicted tariffs would spur inflation. <\/p>\n

\u201cMargaret, when we were here in March, you said there was going to be big inflation. There hasn\u2019t been any inflation,\u201d Bessent shot back during an exchange about whether<\/a> retailers will have less inventory or jack up prices. <\/p>\n

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hailed the latest inflation data as evidence tariffs may not be as bad as economists predict. CBS News<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Brennan pressed Bessent on a recent Wall Street Journal piece<\/a> by famed Republican strategist Karl Rove, who ticked through the economics and math of tariffs and warned that they could cost the GOP its majorities in Congress.<\/p>\n

\u201cActually, the inflation numbers are the best in four years. So why don\u2019t we stop trying to say this could happen, and wait and see what does happen,\u201d Bessent added about their exchange in March. <\/p>\n

Last month, prices for consumers rose 2.3% over the year in April, down from 2.4% in March, marking the slowest year-over-year increase in over four years, according to the Labor Department\u2019s consumer price index.<\/p>\n

Notably, April is the month when Trump announced, then paused, much of his planned \u201cLiberation Day\u201d tariffs. Many economists believe that the US still hasn\u2019t yet felt the full impact of those tariffs.<\/p>\n

In March, during her interview<\/a> with Bessent, Brennan pointed to studies warning that tariffs would put upward pressure on prices. Bessent shrugged off one of those studies, from the Peterson Institute, as \u201calarmist.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Treasury secretary was grilled by CBS over the potential impact of tariffs. CBS News<\/p>\n

During that interview, Bessent defended the Trump administration\u2019s announcement of an affordability czar who would look at the \u201cfive or eight areas where this administration can make a big difference for working-class Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Sunday, the Treasury secretary also praised the Trump administration\u2019s progress in bringing down prices for energy, eggs and food. He also cited a South China Morning Post<\/a> story, which found that Chinese suppliers could have to eat up to 66% of the tariff costs. <\/p>\n

Bessent also clarified that the Trump administration is seeking to \u201cde-risk\u201d from China with its push for a new trade arrangement with Beijing. Last week, Bessent acknowledged that deliberations with China have been \u201ca bit stalled.\u201d<\/p>\n

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also clarified that the Trump administration\u2019s goal is to \u201cde-risk\u201d from China. CBS News<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we are trying to do is to de-risk. We do not want to decouple Margaret, but we do need to de-risk, as we saw during COVID, whether it was with semiconductors, medicines, the other products we are in the process of de-risking,\u201d Bessent explained. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat China is doing is they are holding back products that are essential for the industrial supply chains of India, of Europe, and that is not what a reliable partner does.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent took a victory lap Sunday over recent inflation numbers that show a key benchmark…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3090],"tags":[51,1700,476,2452,285,7686,479,1201,51929,16,15,727],"class_list":{"0":"post-150746","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-inflation","11":"tag-media","12":"tag-politics","13":"tag-scott-bessent","14":"tag-tariffs","15":"tag-trade","16":"tag-treasury-department","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom","19":"tag-us-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}