<\/p>\n
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent<\/p>\n
(Bloomberg) — US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent deflected concerns about high costs under President Donald Trump, saying the administration had inherited elevated price levels and that its policies would generate real income gains for American workers.<\/p>\n
Most Read from Bloomberg<\/p>\n
\u201cWe inherited an affordability crisis,\u201d Bessent said on MSNBC Tuesday, adding that inflation was the worst in 40 or 50 years under President Joe Biden. \u201cWe have slowed the price increases down, and they are going to continue to slow down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bessent spoke a week after Democrats won several key elections by zeroing in concerns over the cost of living, including housing, groceries, utilities and health care. Trump himself has rebuffed such concerns, telling reporters last week \u201cI don\u2019t want to hear about the affordability\u201d because prices are \u201cmuch less.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bessent Aims to Succeed Where Yellen Failed: Economics Daily<\/p>\n
The Treasury chief told MSNBC that \u201creal working class wages will go up, and that will address the affordability issue.\u201d He also pointed to Trump\u2019s campaign to bring manufacturing back to the US, which he said would produce \u201csubstantial job growth\u201d in the coming months and years.<\/p>\n
Bessent also criticized reporting that he said minimized the decline in mortgage rates. \u201cThe single biggest component of buying a new home,\u201d had undergone what he characterized as a \u201cgigantic drop\u201d since Trump\u2019s inauguration.<\/p>\n
Earlier: Trump Defends 50-Year Mortgage Plan, Calling It \u2018Not a Big Deal\u2019<\/p>\n
As for utilities, Bessent said that \u201ca lot of the home heating costs are actually driven by states.\u201d He asserted that New Jersey had high energy costs because of policies adopted by the outgoing Democratic Governor Phil Murphy. Representative Mikie Sherrill, another Democrat, won the Garden State\u2019s gubernatorial election last week.<\/p>\n
Costs in New York State could be brought down if it put in natural gas pipelines, Bessent said. \u201cSo part of it\u2019s a choice,\u201d he said about utility costs.<\/p>\n
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek<\/p>\n
\u00a92025 Bloomberg L.P.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (Bloomberg) — US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent deflected concerns about high costs under…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563905,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3090],"tags":[54244,3662,51,1700,6202,4341,7686,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-563904","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-affordability-crisis","9":"tag-bloomberg","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-president-donald-trump","13":"tag-president-joe-biden","14":"tag-scott-bessent","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115532008285828897","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563904","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=563904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}