June 24, 2026
WHEN: Today, Wednesday, June 24, 2026
WHERE: CNBC’s “Squawk Box”
Following is 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, Wednesday, June 24. Following are links to video on CNBC.com: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/06/24/treasury-secretary-scott-bessent-tariffs-allowed-for-trade-deals-that-were-previously-impossible.html, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/06/24/treasury-secretary-bessent-u-s-treasury-will-oversee-frozen-iranian-funds-when-theyre-released.html, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/06/24/treasury-secretary-scott-bessent-u-s-gdp-growth-can-return-to-3-percent-before-end-of-the-year.html, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/06/24/treasury-secretary-scott-bessent-mayor-zohran-mamdani-is-the-leader-of-the-democratic-party.html, and https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/06/24/watch-cnbcs-full-interview-with-treasury-secretary-scott-bessent.html.
All references must be sourced to CNBC.
JOE KERNEN: Welcome back to “Squawk Box.” Joining us now, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in studio. Glad to have you here, sir.
SCOTT BESSENT: Joe, good to be with you this morning.
KERNEN: Quite a speech last night. And I don't know whether you have help or whether it's all you. But it was, I thought it was very eloquent and building on some things that I think you've, you've touched on in other settings, I think at other. I think in Dallas, you talked about it maybe at the Reagan Library. But I think as we are celebrating this 250 years of the greatest nation on Earth, we need to just, I think, reflect on how we continue to do what our founders wanted to do in a totally different world with different challenges. And I think your words were the disciplined use of America's economic power in service of our sovereignty. And I think that, I think that, I'm going to remember that. I'm going to put that to memory, because I think it's very statesmanlike.
BESSENT: Well, Joe, it's the, again, thank you for having me. It's exactly what President Trump is implementing in this historic second term. And as we have the 250th this year, it's a good idea to reflect. And President Trump has reawakened and made us all aware and our allies and our enemies that the U.S. has both military might. But we have economic might. And for a long time, our economic might was, not only was it challenged, it was taken for granted and it was abused. And now, we are saying that for our allies, come along with us. Here are the rules of the road. We want reciprocity and engaging and saying like it is a new system, but old values, I think is perfectly appropriate. And President Trump has set the stage for this. When we look at what happened in Iran that you think about it, we had maximum pressure. Then we had Epic Fury. Then we had Economic Fury, and then we had the blockade. And that's how we got the Iranians to the negotiating table.
KERNEN: In just looking over your remarks, what I was struck by, and I think we can, since we have time, we can make the case that, that times are different in terms of post-war United States, where we almost could afford to be taken advantage of by the rest of the world because we were so dominant. But things changed. And those old, those old habits turned into things that actually hurt our country and hollowed out the core. And we're still dealing with that now.
BESSENT: Well, it's what, it was in our interest to rebuild our allies, to defend against communism in the post-World War Two era. And I think that our interests strayed from our economic policies, our economic policies strayed from our interests, that over the past couple of decades, and President Trump has just called for a rethink. And we have a, all hands-on deck in the administration, whether it is our foreign policy, our economic policy, and our military policy. And, you know, everyone wants to be part of the U.S. economy. We're the world's largest consumer. We're the world's great innovator.
KERNEN: Right.
BESSENT: And I'm responsible with our dialogue with China. And I try to put myself and my Chinese counterpart’s seat. And when they look at the United States, the, what do they revere in the United States? First of all, our great military. We've seen that in the past year. Our economy and the strength of the dollar, that our energy independence and our energy dominance, the, and the, our innovation. No one has innovation like this. I got a question last night. It's also the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. And Adam Smith couldn't have imagined what the United States would have unleashed by the letting people innovate the, form their own businesses, and live in a free society. When you unleash human potential like only the United States has, look, look what we've done. We should be proud of this in our 250th year.
KERNEN: I wonder what it would cost to, to make a couple of thousand copies of that and pass it around in New York City. Did you see the results of those elections last night?
BESSENT: Well, you know, who predicted this early on was, I was in the Oval Office meeting with President Trump when the mayor came in to see him. And he said, you're the leader of the Democratic Party now. And that was months ago, and last night—
KERNEN: I wouldn't have believed it. But after last night, I wonder.
BESSENT: Last night we saw the, Mayor Mamdani is the leader of the Democratic Party and the establishment Democrats, finally, we are seeing where the Democrats are going in this election, and it will be a very stark choice between Republican parties and the, it's not the fringe Democratic left anymore. It's the mainstream of the Democratic Party.
KERNEN: What do you think happens? I mean, I, these people probably win in New York for all I know, I'm from New Jersey, but can you take this message national?
BESSENT: We'll see. Seems to be, seems to be playing in Maine. The, seems to be playing in Michigan. Seems to be, so, again, if this is the way the Democratic Party wants to go and it seems to be, more power to them, because we are going to offer a stark contrast. Do you want to keep more of your money? Do you want to have the, or do you want to have the state takeover? And what we can't get is an answer. Where is this ever worked before, Joe? That, you know, as we see, the regimes collapsing in Venezuela, the regimes collapsing in Cuba, where is this ever worked? I can't get an example. I'm an economic historian.
KERNEN: You divided, I guess, what, what you think the way to approach things are into five categories that you went over last night? I think given the background that we just talked about with how we have been taken advantage of, in your view, and in the president's view, I think these first two things, national capacity. Obviously, we need to make things here. And then the second is reciprocity. And both of those play into the whole idea of tariffs. And I don't know if Hamilton would have been in favor of tariffs.
BESSENT: No. Hamilton was the earliest tariff ban. He was in favor of tariffs for several reasons. He wanted to protect the nascent industry of the United States of America as we built capacity to compete, especially with the Brits. And he also wanted to fund the treasury. So Alexander Hamilton was the original tariff man.
KERNEN: But I guess what year do you think it became just such a terrible word?
BESSENT: Look, I'm not sure when it did. There were great tariff fights during the McKinley era, but the, tariffs had worked very well. And then the income tax came in at a very low level. And then the income tax just kept getting ratcheted up. We had an income tax in the United States right after the Civil War, and it was to pay down the United States debt, but we paid down the debt, and then the income tax went away, came back right after World War I.
KERNEN: Okay. So tariffs at this point obviously have, in your view, have been de minimis in adding to the structural inflation that we have or, or worth it, or how would you characterize it?
BESSENT: Look, the data, people like to say that it's added, added to inflation. But when we look at the data, the structural inflation has been in services. And you, you don't import the services. And what we've seen the, is in many of the goods, the prices that have been paid by the producers. We saw many of the Chinese producers, some of the Chinese low end clothing companies reduced their prices by more than 50 percent.
KERNEN: Yeah. And at this point, the method to use because of what happened with the Supreme Court.
BESSENT: Yeah. Well, that was, that was unfortunate. The president used IEEPA, which was a very efficient way to put on tariffs. We have rebooted the tariff program. Right now, we have something called section 122 tariffs, which is a 10 percent global tariff. Currently, USTR, Ambassador Jamieson Greer, is doing studies for section 301. And if those studies are successful and I have no reason to believe they won't be, but we don't know until they are, then the tariff rates are going to go back to exactly where they were. I would say the good thing about having used IEEPA in 2025, it allowed us very quickly to get to tariff deals or trade deals that we never would have gotten to before. The E.U., the E.U. is going to pay us 15 percent and they are going to charge us zero. So we have had a big, the rebalancing there. So, and they're bringing down their non-tariff trade barriers, many, many of their unfair financing practices. And it's the same around the world, whether it's Japan, Korea, our allies, you know, whether it's China. So I think it's been a big success. At Treasury, assuming that the 301 studies go through, we think that there's going to be a de minimis decline in tariff revenue in our projections for fiscal, for calendar year 2026.
KERNEN: We should feel comfortable dictating a lot of trade rules, as the United States. Your third principle is that America is going to write the rules of the next economy. So we're going to write the rules on trade. We're going to write the rules on A.I. Do we have the right to do that? I think that you feel that we do, and the president feels that we do. We don't want, we don't want red communist China writing the rules, I don’t think.
BESSENT: Well, I think we have the obligation to do it because we're the leader. We are. We are the leader. The, I was just accompanied the president to the G7 meeting, and it was the U.S. tech companies who are by far in the lead and—
KERNEN: Still at this point, no doubt.
BESSENT: No doubt and—
KERNEN: China knows that.
BESSENT: And the nature of A.I. and the recursive learning of the models that once you get in the lead, then the models, they start working to train themselves. And it's very difficult for anyone to catch you if you keep up that path. But I think what's important here is we can't let other countries bog us down with regulations. We're seeing that globally, U.S. is an energy superpower, and then other countries are trying to use extraterritorial measures to say, oh, look, you have to get your nat gas this way. You've got to have a methane cap or something like that. And we can't do that in A.I., and we're not going to do it. We are the A.I. superpower, China's next, and France is a distant third.
KERNEN: Yeah. We shouldn't be shy about forcing our will on the way things are done.
BESSENT: Well, we are setting the global standards, just as we set global standards in many, many industries. And it's the standards when you look back at the cell phone industry and mobile data. It's very important that we use our standards, you know, 3G, 4G, 5G, 6G, because the country that sets the standards and has the advantage. So, look, for 6G, we want to work with our allies and form a western alliance. And again, the U.S. wants to lead, but we want to bring other countries along.
KERNEN: The, I guess maybe this is one of the most important. Fourth principle that you outlined is financial leadership in terms of currency, I think in terms of the dollar and I don't, people haven't seen perhaps the rebound in the dollar in recent months is kind of, has gone unnoticed because the demise was greatly exaggerated. I think we have a chart where we can, we can look at that. It might not be for all the right reasons, higher interest rates, etc. But dollar dominance is essential.
BESSENT: Well, dollar dominance is essential. And everything President Trump is doing here, if you look, the new Venezuela is going to, is invoicing in dollars that are coming back onto the dollar system. They've been sanctioned. They were not allowed to translate or to transact in dollars. And now, dollar, the dollar is going to be the centerpiece of their trade. They were selling discounted oil to China and not getting dollars. We're seeing in the Iranian negotiations, the Iranians will be invoicing in dollars. So everything we are doing is pushing the dollar, the, back. It's never left as the centerpiece for the global currency system, but we're reinforcing it. You know, I would anticipate when the Russia-Ukraine conflict ends, that Russia will want to come back in the dollar system because again, the dollar, it's our liquidity, it's our capital markets. It's the depth and breadth. Everyone wants to be here. And I think many times the great, great thing about the United States is we course-correct when we go too far one way or the other. And I think we should not be the shy about flexing where we have advantages and where we have advantages, share with our allies and push back the, on those who are not aligned with us.
KERNEN: You need to, I guess, convince certain people that, that after 40 years of not being able to sell oil for dollars, that's finally going to happen. I'm sure that, that was something that you either signed off on or came up with. But before we do, I think the president we're talking about Iran. He just posted something on Truth Social: “Iran has informed the U.S. that despite trouble making fake news reporting, to the contrary, there are no tolls, no insurance costs, and no other charges of any kind being sought or received by Iran on ships traveling the Strait of Hormuz. If this is false information, negotiations would end immediately. Additionally, no money has been given to Iran or released from their money to them by the U.S. We will be releasing some of their money that is totally controlled by us to our farmers and ranchers for the purchase of corn, wheat, soybeans and more. Food is desperately needed in Iran, and we will be purchasing it for them exclusively from the United States. Thanks for your attention to this matter, Donald J. Trump.”
BESSENT: Well, I think that's a very important statement for the American people to understand. So any money that the Iranians get first is going to be used for the benefit of the Iranian people. It is going to be Iranian frozen funds. And U.S. Treasury will have people sitting, the initial money will likely be released from Qatar. U.S. Treasury will have people sitting in Doha overseeing that, how the money is allocated, and a very large percent of it will go to buy U.S. foodstuffs and medicines. So we will be recycling the money back into U.S. products, but it will be overseen by Treasury, the, in the Middle East.
KERNEN: At this point, I mean, would you say that, that the president's pragmatic approach to ending this, is it an off ramp? Did we accomplish everything we needed to accomplish, in your view?
BESSENT: Yeah. Look, I think we didn't have a regime change, but we changed the regime. And that's what took a long time in terms of getting to the negotiations, the actual fighting, which our military destroyed, their air force, destroyed their navy, destroyed a large part of their missile stockpile, but more importantly, destroyed 80 or 85 percent of their missile producing capabilities. So we've done that. But, Joe, what took a long time was finding people to negotiate with. If you think about the Iranian power structure, it's three, it's three different groups. It's the elected officials on one side, the IRGC in the middle, and then the clerics on the other. And those were decapitated at the first level, some at the second level. And now, we are down at the third level. And what President Trump has done with the combination of Epic Fury, Economic Fury and the blockade for the first time ever, for the first time since 1979, the Iranians are willing to discuss their nuclear program. Never happened before.
KERNEN: Treasury secretaries love strong dollars, obviously, we've never, I don't think we've ever had one that would ever say they'd like a weaker dollar.
BESSENT: What we love is doing the right things to make the dollar strong. So we want certainty. We have great tax certainty thanks to the Working Families Tax Cut, also known as a One Big, Beautiful Bill, we have regulatory certainty thanks to President Trump's deregulatory regime. And originally, he told the cabinet, for every one new regulation, you've got to take out 10. I think we've taken out 100. So, great regulatory certainty. And the U.S. is the only manufacturing location in the world that can provide great energy certainty because now, the leading energy producer and exporter in the world.
KERNEN: I guess I was getting to in a backward way to Kevin Warsh, dollar stability seems to be very, very important to him. But dollar stability could mean higher interest rates for longer, I would think. And I'm wondering how that plays into President Trump's desire for a lower rate—
BESSENT: Again, you can have a strong dollar when rates are being cut because the U.S. economy is accelerating. You can have a strong dollar because the rate, interest rate differential is high. But mostly, I think we're going to have a strong dollar because our economy is pulling away from the rest of the world. Look at the way our economy has performed during the Iranian conflict. The rest of the world has gone negative to zero plus, plus or minus the point-something percent, and the U.S. economy, that's because we went into this on very strong energy footing, that on very strong CapEx cycle from both the A.I. and the tax bill, the U.S. economy has really performed. And we're going to get to the other side of this conflict. As you, you were just showing, energy prices are coming down, inflation is going to drop, and the economy, I think, is going to be accelerating in a non-inflationary basis for the rest of the year and for the rest of the president's term.
KERNEN: I think maybe in light of what we're seeing in polls and elsewhere about Americans continuing to have affordability concerns, the fifth and most important thing that you outlined last night was that all of this, there's one goal in all of this, and that is to have the average American participate in all this prosperity.
BESSENT: Yeah. And look, this is what happened. We had the China shock and the American manufacturing base was decimated. And we are trying to bring that back. And we've got to make sure that these policies work for everyone, not just, you know, like the coastal elites, not everyone within ten miles of here. Because what happened was a lot of the economic growth was not evenly distributed. President Trump's first term, hourly workers did better than managerial workers. The bottom 50 percent of households did better than the top 10 percent. And I think we're going to get back to that. Before the Iran conflict, we had had real wage growth every month up until April. And I think we're going to be back in that cadence. And, look, we understand that the Biden administration torched affordability, worst inflation in 50 years, 21.5 percent increase in the price level. And that is still smarting. And we are working every day to try to bring that down.
KERNEN: Do you think that the recent rebound that we've seen in some in prices, PPI and CPI, even on the core, is that seeping in from $95 oil? Is that what did it or are there still, are there still structural things in the economy? And I'm not necessarily saying tariffs, but perhaps tariffs that are causing it to be well above the Fed's target. We've been above the Fed's target for how long, for years—
BESSENT: Well, I—
KERNEN: Of 2 percent.
BESSENT: Look, I, in February, I thought that we would be very close to the Fed's target by middle of the summer, September. And, look, the Fed thought that also. The Fed thought that also. We had rate cuts at the end of last year, the Dot projections which the—
KERNEN: Are you glad Warsh won't do Dot projections?
BESSENT: I don't think anyone should do Dot projections. The only reason I ever liked the Dots was when I had my investment business. We had a trading model that actually traded against the Dots because the Dots are always wrong. That the Fed board and their participants who do the Dots, they kind of get worked up. It's groupthink. They move one way. The Dots start pricing in a lot. Then you can trade against that. Then they move another way and you can trade against that. So that's the only good thing about the Dots. That I do applaud Chair Warsh’s getting rid of forward guidance. I think that, that is kind of a crutch that market participants have started leaning on.
KERNEN: How much interaction should you have with Kevin Warsh at this point? Should you have lunch every week? Is that, is that—
BESSENT: We have breakfast every week. I did the same with Chair Powell. I think we had 41 breakfasts. And look, it is important for the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve to discuss ideas, to discuss policy changes, where do we see the economy going, where do we see regulation going, and what do we think are the challenges?
KERNEN: Do you think that productivity in gains from whether you think it's the president's policies, whether you think it's A.I., you think it's going to be a different world, a world where an economy can run hot? We just lost Alan Greenspan, and there's a lot of comparisons to the way that Chair Warsh should be managing things based on letting the economy run hot, and still having lower interest rate.
BESSENT: Well, I wouldn't call it letting the economy run hot, because that connotation is that inflation is running high.
KERNEN: Okay.
BESSENT: I think—
KERNEN: A strong, a high, a good GDP.
BESSENT: I think we're going to have a high GDP economy, the, without the traditional inflation seeping in. And as over the past few days, we've read the obituaries on Alan Greenspan. He had the foresight that in the ‘90s, productivity was about 1.5 percent or leading into the ‘90s, he saw that the office modernization and the internet could be a boom for non-inflationary growth. And he let the economy, the, you know, I think that there was an early ’97, there was one tap on the brakes rate hike. But other than that, we had the longest sustained growth period in history. And I think there's a very good chance that we could see that again.
KERNEN: But is there at this point still an underlying inflation rate that the Fed needs to be concerned with? Would you expect it rate cuts this year or even next year, given that we're nowhere near 2 percent?
BESSENT: Again, I'm not going to comment on that. But what I think is that we do need to have an open mind on the price or the inflation impact of the Iran conflict, and let's see what inflation looks like on the other side of this. And then we have an open mind that the A.I. boom could up productivity and be disinflationary, get us back down to target. What I am confident is, that Kevin Warsh will do what, will take the best path to satisfy both the inflation mandate and the growth mandate. And look, he came out tough talking about the inflation.
KERNEN: A lot about price stability. I mean, if you had, you probably won't share it with me. But have you had conversations with the president that maybe it's not the right time to cut rates?
BESSENT: The president that has said, both in public and privately, that he has every confidence in Kevin Warsh, that, that's why he chose him, because he, you know, at the Chair Warsh's swearing in. And then recently, I think we were getting off the airplane in France and the president said, I want him to do what's best. That's why I chose him.
KERNEN: You're three, three and three. Go into that again. We were making some progress again. You know, you have a lot of the fighter goes into the ring with a great plan until it gets hit in the face. I mean, the Iran war, did it change your view on how we can, we can get debt as a percentage of GDP?
BESSENT: No. So three, three, three, the three components where we could have three percent growth. I think we might have been growing at four in February. I think we're going to get back and we can have something with a three in front of it this year. As I said, the underlying economy has been strong. The other, one of the other three's, is three million more barrels a day equivalents. So, crude and net gas, export LNG, which we’re well on our way to. We've never produced so much energy, never exported so much, and then deficit to GDP of 3 percent. What we didn't get any credit for in 2025 was we had a fiscal contraction. So when we came in 2024, deficit to GDP was about 6.8 percent. Democrats, as they always do, blew out spending in the fourth quarter to unsuccessfully get Vice President Harris elected. So that was the highest when we haven't had a recession, haven't been at war, 6.8, we brought it down to 5.5, 5.4 for calendar year 2025. And I don't know if we're going to make progress this year, but I think by the end of the president's term, we can be at something that looks like it could have a three in front of it. And what's important about that? That's when you start paying down overall debt as a percent of the economy.
KERNEN: Do Trump accounts play into it, might not be under the president's administration where it finally starts to benefit the average American. But is that part of having everyone in this country participate in the greatness of the United States?
BESSENT: Yeah. Joe, 38 percent of the American public has or American households have no stake in our great equity market, that maybe they have jobs at the companies, but they don't participate in the stock appreciation. And I think the Trump accounts are one of the ways that are going to remedy that. So every child under 18 can have one. Children who were born during this administration get $1,000 seed investment from treasury. But importantly, every, every family should open one because we are also going to see contributions. We've seen great philanthropists like Susan and Michael Dell. They're putting in $6.25 billion into the Trump accounts, is going to be distributed again to everyone in the, up until age 18 across the country. As long as you're not in a 20 percent upper zip code. So the bottom 80 percent of zip code by earners are, the children are going to get $250 from the Dells, and we are seeing other philanthropists pay into those accounts. We are seeing foundations who want to pay in. We're seeing some of the states are going to contribute and it's going to be a new corporate perk. So, and families can put in up to $5,000. And I think this is going to be a game changer. You know, what we saw yesterday in New York is a disillusionment with the system. We bring more people into the system. And, you know, I actually think, Joe, we're going to be helping your viewer base that 38 percent of Americans, the, you've got 38 percent of America that can now watch your show every day.
KERNEN: That's, we'll take it. Mr. Secretary, again, you've been generous with your time. We appreciate it and making the effort. I like all that. Can you leave the Secret Service? You need those guys, I guess.
BESSENT: What's that?
KERNEN: Can you leave the Secret Service? Guys, you need all these?
BESSENT: I think we've been a little too successful with the Iranians.
KERNEN: We're in the middle of Times Square. I mean, every time you see training tapes, it's like filmed out here. So, anyway, great to have you on. I appreciate all your time.
BESSENT: Good to see you, Joe.
KERNEN: Thank you very much.
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