Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent delivered an expansive vindication of the Trump administration’s economic record on Wednesday, arguing that a combination of tariffs, tax cuts, and deregulation had produced what he called a “historic turnaround” after years of malaise under President Biden.
Speaking to business leaders at the Economic Club of Minnesota, Bessent laid out a vision of an economy revitalized by strategic government intervention in trade, sweeping changes to the tax code, and a sharp pivot away from regulations he said had stifled entrepreneurship and innovation.
The speech represented one of the most comprehensive articulations to date of the administration’s economic philosophy, which Bessent distilled into what he called the “three I’s” of investment, innovation, and income — a formulation designed to contrast with what he described as the Biden era’s problems of immigration, interest rates, and inflation.
“In just one short year, President Trump has delivered a historic economic turnaround to put our country back on the path to prosperity,” Bessent told the audience, citing economic growth of roughly 4 percent in the first two full quarters of Trump’s term and nearly 3 percent in the fourth quarter, despite a government shutdown led by Democrats.
Bessent spoke hours after the government released data showing productivity had surged beyond even the most optimistic expectations and the trade deficit had fallen to the narrowest gap since 2009. The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow tracker has the economy expanding at a 5.4 percent rate in the fourth quarter of 2025.
“We’re starting the see the effects of the president’s policies kick-in,” Joe Lavorgna, counselor to the Treasury Secretary, said in an interview with Breitbart News after Bessent’s talk. “These data points that we’re seeing at the end of 2025 set us up with strong momentum going in to 2026.”