Summary:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent may be planning to cut and run after Donald Trump’s disastrous “reciprocal tariff” announcement earlier this week.
During an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Friday, contributor Stephanie Ruhle reported that the key Cabinet member is already looking for an escape hatch.
“My sources say that Scott Bessent is kind of the odd man out here and, in the inner circle that Trump has, he’s not even close to Scott Bessent or listening to him,” Ruhle said. “Some have said to me, he’s looking for an exit door to try to get himself to the Fed, because in the last few days he’s really hurting his own credibility and history in the markets.”
To be sure, Trump’s tariff policy represents a sort of defeat for Bessent, a former hedge fund manager who entered office under the delusion that he might actually succeed in stopping Trump from wrecking the economy. Should he flee the administration now, he would likely forfeit what little credibility remains.
Bessent warned other countries Wednesday not to make any rash decisions in reaction to Trump’s sweeping “retaliatory tariff” policy, which included a 10 percent baseline tariff on almost every country in the world.
“My advice to every country right now is: Do not retaliate. Sit back, take it in, let’s see how it goes. Because if you retaliate, there will be escalation. If you don’t retaliate, this is the high-water mark,” he warned.
Bessent’s warning came off particularly clueless given that democratically elected foreign leaders are likely beholden to their electorate, who won’t take lightly to Trump’s blatant bullying.
Ruhle’s sources told her Bessent must understand just how ridiculous Trump’s tariff policy is because he “actually understands how the markets work, and what’s happening right now is only going to hurt markets,” she said.
And it already has: The Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite experienced their single worst sessions since 2020 on Thursday. Bessent’s nomination had received strong Republican support because of his experience with financial markets.
The base is fully bought in on the crazy idea Trump tanks the market so he can refi the debt and save billions in interest and also the fed will be forced to drop interest rates. It’s crazy though bc the impact of that will be catastrophic. The reason the US is so strong economically is because the dollar is the reserve currency of the world. You lose that power then it’s harder to bounce back if at all.
They are rooting for the dollar to tank because they think it will make the price of his shitty Crypto token that they all bought skyrocket. Big brain math!
Running the country like he ran his businesses.
Except that bankrupting a country is really, really fucking bad for everyone in that country.