Bessent Spins Tariffs as Prices Rise, And Blames You

Besent spins tariffs while prices stay high. According to the Times, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant is trying to convince Americans that Trump's tariffs are painless and that inflation is under control, even as people feel squeezed every time they buy groceries or pay the rent. On Meet the Press, Bessant brushed off concerns, saying, so inflation hasn't gone up and even suggested unhappy consumers should, quote, move from a blue state to a red state if they want lower inflation. Okay, here's a reality check. The latest official consumer price index shows prices up 3% over the last year through September 2025. A year earlier, that 12 month increase was roughly 2.4%. Now, remember that that was supposedly the big reason everyone couldn't stand Biden and Trump was going to come in to slay this monstrous 2.4% inflation. Well, it hasn't gone down, it's gone up to 3%. So inflation has risen, not fallen on Trump's watch. Percent. Used to call tariffs inflationary. Like most Wall street guys and most economists, Scott Besant said, no, you shouldn't have tariffs. They're inflationary. In fact, he warned people before Trump took office, don't worry, he's not really going to do this tariff thing. Now he calls them, quote, a melting ice cube and tells Americans that access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream. Okay, imagine if Biden had tried that for families staring at higher prices. That sounds like a lot less like economics and more like gaslighting. Okay, what's the real message here? Scott Bessant spent his career saying tariffs are bad, tariffs are bad. Now he's saying, not that bad, and there's more to life than buying stuff. Oh, and by the way, if you don't like inflation, move to a red state. This is obtuse to say the least. And if you're a billionaire like Scott Besant, you can move yourself, your husband and your children any place in the world. You can move to Florida. But for most Americans just getting by, just barely paying rent, just barely paying for the groceries, and seeing inflation take more out of their pocketbook, they can't afford to just pick up and move to a cheaper state that cost a lot of money. Let's go a little bit deeper here. Fox News polls show that 76% of voters rate Trump's economy as bad. This is a Fox News poll. So you can't just say, well, that's MSNBC or that's the liberal news media. This is Fox reporting this. Now, economic issues and things like inflation are tough for any politician of any party. Biden tried to make the case that, hey, inflation's gone way down. It did go down to 2.4% in his last year. People didn't care. It was still above 2%, which is kind of the magic threshold for the Fed and others. And it had been higher earlier in his administration. And he made the case that, hey, inflation's lower here than most of Europe. Didn't persuade anybody, but now we're seeing Trump with the same kind of problems trying to spin this to see his Secretary of the treasury say something as lame as, oh, you don't like inflation move. Moving is simply beyond the ability of tens of millions of Americans for economic reasons. One, they don't have a job in a red state. If they've got a job that pays them, you know, $35,000 a year working, let's say, security at a local bank, and they're just barely able to pay their rent or their mortgage, they can't just say, oh, well, 10. Taxes are lower in Texas and Florida. I'll move there. They don't have a job, number one. Number two, to move, even if you don't have a lot of possession, even if you don't want to take anything, you still have to have first month, last month deposits for new apartments. If you're buying a house, well, there's tons and tons of expenses there. You're selling your house, there's expenses. So you're either moving your stuff so you have moving expenses, or you're getting rid of all your stuff. You got to move to a new city and buy all new stuff. Again, if you're someone like Scott Pess, if you're at Wall wizard and you're worth 500 million, or a billion as Besant is supposedly worth, it's no problem. It's pocket change to move. And if you're someone in his situation, probably already own five homes anyway, and you can just declare residency in the least expensive state. But that is not the life of most Americans. Most Americans have one home or one apartment, and they're living on a very thin margin. Tens of millions of Americans are about $300 away from being insolvent. So when they hear a glib billionaire say, I'll just move to a red state, I think it comes across as pretty, pretty callous, not particularly persuasive, and is one of the reasons why the Trump administration is quickly losing its political support and its favorability on the economy. Now, it is true, an extraordinarily high percentage of Republicans still support Donald Trump, there's no doubt about it. But his primary reason for support by so many voters last year was the sense that he was better on the economy. He was better for things like inflation. He was going to solve inflation where there's those bad old liberal Democrats, those radical left Democrats were somehow loving inflation. They wanted to go to 10 or 20% again. According to the most recent impartial, unbiased sources, inflation last year was 2.4%. It's 3% this year. For some things, like turkeys, it's gone up even higher. Are you feeling inflation? Go ahead, let me know. Post your comments here.