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Donald Trump’s new Treasury secretary blew off the apparent slowdown in the nation’s economy as nothing more than “detox” as government spending switches to the private sector.
Secretary Scott Bessent acknowledged apparent signs of a slowed economy following a weeklong drop in the stock market rattled by Donald Trump’s tariffs and a lower-than expected report of 151,000 new jobs in February (170,000 was predicted).
"Could we be seeing that this economy that we inherited starting to roll a bit? Sure," Bessent said in an interview Friday on CNBC'sSquawk Box.
“The market and the economy have become hooked, become addicted, to excessive government spending, and there’s going to be a detox period,” Bessent said.
He insisted it would be a “natural adjustment” as the Trump administration pushes the nation “away from public spending to private spending,”
Bessent didn’t detail how spending for benefits like Social Security or many other public services could be switched to the private sector because they wouldn’t be profitable for a business to take them over.
It’s possible he was referring to spending less on public employees in jobs that have been slashed by the thousands by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and instead paying private companies to do the work.
Musk himself is angling for a $2.4 billion federal contract for his SpaceX company to overhaul the Federal Aviation Administration.
A SpaceX engineer who also volunteers for DOGE has threatened FAA employees with termination if they stand in the way of FAA work already being done by the private company at the agency, which could lead to a lucrative federal contract, Bloomberg reported this week.
Bessent defended Trump’s market-rattling on-again, off-again tariffs. He said they are a “one-time” price increase and claimed they won’t fuel inflation.
Tariffs on imported goods are paid by companies like Target that typically pass on the price hikes to American consumers. The price increases are paid for as long as the tariffs exist.