By Molly Goddard
1:48am PDT, Apr 8, 2025
_
As the United States economy continues to be rattled by
Donald Trump's tariffs, people in his administration think it's all going great.
During a Sunday, April 6, appearance on NBC's
Meet the Press, Treasury Secretary
Scott Bessent revealed he thought the rollout of the
taxes on imported goods was going "smoothly" despite its profound effect on the stock market.
Join us to hear what the official said about the newly imposed duties…
MORE:
Follow Wonderwall on MSN for more top news
_
Despite the financial uncertainty, Scott Bessent claimed citizens of the United States should feel "great comfort" about the historic $6 trillion
stock market crash.
"Everything is working very smoothly so the American people, they can take great comfort in that," the former hedge fund manager explained during the television appearance. "In terms of the market reaction, look, we get these short-term market reactions from time to time."
"As the treasury secretary, what I've been very impressed with is the market infrastructure, that we had record volume on Friday," he claimed.
_
Host
Kristen Welker asked Scott Bessent about Donald Trump telling the American people they need to "hang tough" while the tariffs are in place and questioned exactly how long it would be until there's economic relief from an impending recession.
"I reject that the assumption — there doesn't have to be a recession," Bessent said. "What we are looking at is building the long-term
economic fundamentals for prosperity that I think the previous administration had put us on a course toward financial calamity."
"This is an adjustment process," Bessent continued. "What we saw with President
[Ronald] Reagan when he brought down, you know, the Great Inflation and we got past the Carter malaise, that there was some choppiness at that time. But he held the course. And, you know, we're going to hold the course."
_
On Sunday, April 6, Donald Trump took to Truth Social to double down on his implementation of the tariffs despite the Dow Jones Industrial Average reportedly being down 2.1 percent and the S&P 500 plummeting to about 2.5 percent.
"They are already in effect and a beautiful thing to behold. The Surplus with these Countries has grown during the 'Presidency' of Sleepy Joe Biden," he wrote. "We are going to reverse it and reverse it QUICKLY. Someday people will realize that Tariffs, for the United States of America, are a very beautiful thing!"
_
Although Americans may be feeling the
pain of the tariffs for the time being, Donald Trump claimed the hardship will only be temporary.
"Sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something," the former reality star wrote. "We have been treated so badly by other countries because we had stupid leadership that allowed this to happen. They took our business, they took our money, they took our jobs."
