President Trump delays tariffs on Mexico and Canada
President Trump has agreed to delay tariffs on Mexico and Canada for one month.
WASHINGTON ― Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned Friday the U.S. economy could enter a “detox period” as the Trump administration shifts from robust government spending to push more private sector spending.
Bessent acknowledged signs of a slowed economy after a weeklong plunge in the stock market, precipitated by President Donald Trump’s new tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and a new jobs report Friday that showed 151,000 added in February, slightly lower than projections.
“Could we be seeing that this economy that we inherited starting to roll a bit? Sure,” Bessent said in an interview Friday on MSNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “Look, there’s going to be a natural adjustment as we move away from public spending to private spending. The market and the economy have just become hooked, and we’ve become addicted to this government spending. And there’s going to be a detox period.”
Trump campaigned on lowering consumer prices after years of stubborn inflation under President Joe Biden, even as it gradually fell over his final year in office.
Bessent on Friday downplayed the stock market turbulence of the past week ‒ although, during his first term in office, Trump was known to routinely tout stock market gains.
“Look, the market was up 20 percent last year, 20 percent the year before,” Bessent said. “Did the Biden administration succeed? The American people weren’t buying it just because the market was up. They voted out the Democrats.”
Bessent accused the Biden administration of creating “an unstable equilibrium” in which the top 10% of income-earners accounted for between 40% and 50% of consumption while “the bottom 50% of working Americans have gotten killed.”
“We are trying to address that,” Bessent said, pointing to efforts to lower interest rates, which are set by the Federal Reserve.
Trump’s new 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico ignited a trade war and stoked consumer anxiety about rising consumer prices. He later backpedaled by agreeing to exemptions on automobile imports and goods that are compliant with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
Many goods from both neighboring countries are still subject to the tariffs, and Trump intends to move forward with long-promised reciprocal tariffs on April 2 that will apply duties to any country that levies tariffs on U.S. exports.
“It’ll be a choice,” Bessent said. “Either they can drop the market manipulation and things like that that they’ve done that have hurt American workers ‒ and if they do that, then we could have more frictionless trade. Or we’ll put up the tariff wall, we’ll collect a lot of money, and we will make the system fairer.”
In remarks Thursday to the Economic Club of New York, Bessent defended Trump’s tariffs by saying, “Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American Dream. The American Dream is rooted in the concept that any citizen can achieve prosperity, upward mobility, and economic security.”
“For too long,” he added, “the designers of multilateral trade deals have lost sight of this. International economic relations that do not work for the American people must be reexamined.”
Reach Joey Garrison on X @joeygarrison.