WATCH: Bessent Turns The Tables On ‘Gotcha’ Question From ‘Meet The Press’

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent turned the tables on a number of negatively framed economic questions from “Meet The Press Host” Kristen Welker during Sunday’s installment of the long-running program.

Bessent joined the program to discuss the Trump Administration’s economic policies on the heels of a weaker than expected jobs report that came out earlier this week. Much of Sunday’s discussion focused on President Trump’s tariff strategy, with Welker noting that the manufacturing sector has undergone a slight pullback in recent weeks.

“Are these numbers proof that the tariffs are failing to produce the manufacturing jobs that President Trump promised?” Welker asked. The secretary responded by noting that the administration can’t “snap their fingers” and instantly boost manufacturing, though he expressed confidence that the numbers will come up in the near future.

“Kristen, it’s been a couple of months, and with the manufacturing sector, as you know, you know, we can’t snap our fingers and have factories built. So what we’re seeing is a record amount of investment intentions,” he said. “We’ve seen a [capital expenditure] boom in the first half of the year, and I think that was actually held back. The one big beautiful bill, which has full expensing for factories and equipment, was passed on July 4th. Many companies were holding back then. So we’re going to see construction jobs and we’re going to see manufacturing jobs.”

Bessent also took issue with Welker’s claim that hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs were created during the Biden presidency by pointing to a number of downward revisions on jobs reports. “We’re going to get the revisions for last year next week, and there may be as big as an 800 ,000 job downward revision again. This would be the second downward revision. So I’m not sure what these people who collect the data have been doing. It’s good. We need good data,” the secretary said.

“Secondly, what we’re seeing is the jobs that are being created are going to either native born or legal Americans. Most of the jobs created under the Biden administration, they went to illegal aliens.”

Bessent further rejected Welker’s framing of the nation’s economic outlook, which was overwhelmingly negative. “Kristen, if things are so bad, why was the GDP 3.3 percent? Why is the stock market at a new high? Because, you know, with President Trump, we care both about big companies and small companies, and you’re quoting big companies, but the big company index, the S&P, is at a new high.”

Welker then cited Goldman Sachs in claiming that firms in multiple sectors of the economy will be forced to raise prices due to the tariff policy, to which Bessent replied, “I made a good career trading against Goldman Sachs.”