November 13, 2026
WHEN: Today, Friday, November 13, 2026
WHERE: CNBC’s “Squawk Box”
Following are excerpts from the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” (M-F, 6AM-9AM ET) today, Friday, November 13. Following is a link to the full video on CNBC.com: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/11/13/watch-cnbcs-full-interview-with-treasury-sec-scott-bessent-on-nvidia-china-trade.html.
All references must be sourced to CNBC.
BESSENT ON IRAN
F the Iranian leadership. I'm not going to be cowered that they have initiated death threats against me. The other members of the cabinet. We are not going to be cowered. And it means what we are doing with Operation Economic Outcast is working.
BESSENT ON MOVING TO MILITARY BASE
I follow the Secret Service instructions and have moved from my home to a military base. And what I will tell you Joe, I do want to say, is that one of the reasons I've had to move is because The Wall Street Journal printed a photo of my house the day I bought it that has geolocate on it. And in a highly irresponsible way, the editor, we pleaded with her not to print the location of my house but she did anyway. Highly irresponsible and dangerous. And things like that have to stop, too.
BESSENT ON AGENCIES BACKING ACTION AGAINST MEGASPEED
I can tell you, there was coordination. Treasury, War, USTR and State — they were in favor of putting Megaspeed on the entity list for months. But Commerce has the pin — Commerce BIS has the pin. And you will have to ask them about their internal process.
BESSENT ON NVIDIA CHIP LEAKAGE
I am frustrated when President Trump made it very clear that China should not receive any NVIDIA chips above H100s. And so any leakage is very frustrating because it hurts the — it hurts our great companies and in the AI race it gives the Chinese an advantage.
BESSENT ON SCRUTINY AROUND NVIDIA'S CONTROLS AND CUSTOMER CHECKS
I think there is a lot of leakage in the system and we are constantly working to close that down. And one thing here is the story has been thus far on Jensen Huang's personal foibles. The real story here should be: Did NVIDIA know their client, and was there a robust effort at NVIDIA to make sure that there was no leakage and that they were selling to what were obviously pass-through shell companies? And I think it's important that anyone at the company there be held accountable for that.
BESSENT ON THE MIDTERMS AND INFLATION
The American people have spoken, and we see that post-COVID, post the Biden inflation of 22 percent, that the American people are rightly very skittish. The underlying economy is very strong. We had 3.4 percent growth last quarter. Atlanta Fed GDP now shows 3.5 percent this quarter. We had a blowout jobs number. We are bringing back manufacturing. But what I've always said is that what I'm not going to do is tell the American people how they feel.
BESSENT ON THE FED
I think that to hike too much into an energy supply shock when it's coming down — these are very noisy numbers. Last week's the numbers that got published for October is a noisy number. Then with gasoline down below $4, crude down $20, diesel down 10% thus far, then we're going to get a benign number likely next week. So, you know, the Fed's supposed to look into the future, not look in the rearview mirror.
For more information contact:
Erin Kitzie
CNBC
