CNBC Transcript: U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Spoke with CNBC’s Sara Eisen at CNBC’s “Invest in America Forum” in Washington, D.C. Today, Wednesday, April 15

WHEN: Today, Wednesday, April 15, 2026

WHERE: CNBC's "Invest in America Forum"

Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent at CNBC's "Invest in America Forum," which took place today, Wednesday, April 15 in Washington, D.C. See here for a link to video of the interview on CNBC.com: https://global-deals.online/video/2026/04/15/treasury-secretary-bessent-trump-accounts-sign-up-5-million-kids-1-point-2-million-eligible-for-1k-seed.html%3C/a%3E.

Mandatory credit: CNBC's "Invest in America Forum"

SARA EISEN: Please welcome the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent. It's a long approach.

SCOTT BESSENT: Yeah. Good morning.

EISEN: Good morning. Good to see you. You know, I didn't. I didn't purposely do this on Tax Day, but I think it worked out really well.

BESSENT: Look, it's game day.

EISEN: It's game day.

BESSENT: Game day.

EISEN: So, it's April 15th, it's Tax Day, and that's a perfect way, I think, to kick off an event about Invest in America, because this year, it's going to look a lot different when it comes to taxes, right?

BESSENT: It is. Well, I think -- look, I think, no Americans like the April 15th, but I think more and more this year, refunds are up 13 percent. And we've got as of April 12th, we had 52 million returns filed. And of those returns, 45 percent of them have one of the president's four signature policies in the working families tax cuts. So, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, reduced taxes for seniors, and deductibility of auto loans for American-made cars. By far, what we're seeing on the tax returns, the biggest is almost 25 percent have taken no tax on overtime. And it's the American way. You want to work harder, you keep more of it.

EISEN:  And Trump Accounts, that's new too. Huge part of the story.

BESSENT:  Trump Accounts, easy to remember, Form 4547. If any of you haven't filled it out, we've got 5 million Trump accounts open. And 1.2 million of those, the filers are eligible, their children are eligible for the $1,000 seed investment from Treasury into those accounts. So, 5 million open for children, the zero to 18, and then for children born during President Trump's term, they'll get the $1,000 seed. So, 1.2 million of those so far.

EISEN:  Yeah, which is news that you're breaking here. And I know that you've been working really hard on this, and it's one of the signature policies. You know, there's still -- there's always critics, but there's still this concern that that it's not going to go far enough to reducing inequality, which is a big problem in our economy right now, and that it's just another way for the wealthy to use a tax-advantaged fund.

BESSENT:  Look, the wealthy don't need tax-advantaged funds. I think -- you were there on launch day.

EISEN:  Yeah.

BESSENT:  And I -- only in Trump world would the treasury secretary be on stage with Nicki Minaj, you know, who is a great supporter. She actually --

EISEN:  She's contributing, right?

BESSENT:  She's contributed to a wide group. But one of the interviewers said, well, it shows that the compounding will only be once the account opens up. When a child was 18, it will only be $5,000. And I thought, how elitist, how tone deaf? Because a couple of weeks ago, I had the Mortgage Brokers Association in, and they said that of the mortgages that get started, only 30 percent get completed. So, 70 percent fall off rate, and the fall off rate could be because the potential buyers don't have $1,000 or $2,000 for, to pay for their credit scores, to pay for the title insurance. So, you know, to say that $5,000 in the queue to become part of the American Dream and be a homeowner, like $5,000 would have helped get those other 70 percent of people across the line. And, you know, I think you're going to have Michael Dell on later.

EISEN:  Yes, he's up next.

BESSENT:  Now, Michael and Susan Dell made this incredible gift to the children of America, $6.25 billion, as President Trump said at the Mellon Auditorium. Michael, $250 million would have been a lot, but 6 billion, 250 million, and that is going to be $250 for every child in America who is the -- in -- not in the top 20 percent of net worth zip codes.

EISEN:  Yes.

BESSENT:  And we're going to see that. We think that we're going to have some -- Mike, Michael and Susan were fantastic. They did it nationally. We're seeing philanthropists adopt states, whether it's in Connecticut, Indiana, Oklahoma. We're hoping to have all 50 states done. So, the accounts are going to be topped up. The, you know, the thousand dollars is just the starting point that employers can contribute, foundations can contribute, great philanthropists like Michael and Susan can contribute. We think 20 states are going to contribute. And you know, Sara, what I think is important here is that we're all familiar when we talk about nutrition with food deserts, this idea that families don't have good food alternatives. Well, I've coined the phrase financial service desert, because -- they talked about it, I think Brad Gerstner brought it up at the launch of the Trump Accounts, many of these families, 38 percent of families in America had no exposure to a great equity market, the innovation, what we all take for granted. I think that this -- by opening this account, you are, in a way, it is financial nutrition for these families. And they're going to have this account open -- 

EISEN:  Yeah.

BESSENT:  That an extra $20 can be put in at any time, that, your birthday gifts, here's the teddy bear, here's $10, too, and it'll compound over time.

EISEN:  My kids would appreciate the money. They're luckily, trying to get them financially literate, especially, you know, it'll compound and do very well if the market keeps doing what it's doing. I mean, we were talking before about the market being at a record high despite the surge in the price of oil, obviously the very uncertain outlook on geopolitics and everything else going on. Are you surprised to see the resilience?

BESSENT:  I'm not surprised. I'm always surprised, I, it's Bank Week, IMF World Bank Week, this week here in Washington—

EISEN:  Yeah.

BESSENT:  Along with Tax Day. So, it's a busy week for us at Treasury. And I've been on a lot of panels doing a lot of speaking engagements. And someone asked me, well, what do you try to convey? And I said, look, this was just like on Liberation Day. I walked out and was I on with you?

EISEN:  Maybe. Hopefully.

BESSENT:  But I walked out and said, look, these are the highest tariffs you were going to see if countries don't retaliate. So only China retaliated. The market, I think, went down into Liberation Day, April 2nd. We bottomed on April 14th. Yesterday was April 14th. Market did well. But—

EISEN:  You're saying we've seen the worst of it here?

BESSENT:  Look, I don't make market predictions, but I think the market is like the sum of all the thinking. And, you know, it is a group and markets live in the future. And what I've tried to say is that this war will end. I don't know whether it's three days, three weeks, three months, but it will end. We will get on the other side of this. And what we've seen in the inflation data, core inflation is coming down. It is -- the noisy energy component. And we've seen oil prices collapse over the past two weeks. Interest rates are coming back down. I came out and said, I think the Fed has been wrong on their inflation projections. that it is clear the core is coming down. If they need for their own sanity to wait on interest rate cuts, I understand it, but I think that means they're just going to be able to do more on the other side when it is clear the core is coming down and there is no transmission from the energy price into core goods.

EISEN:  Underlying inflation. I'm glad you brought that up because I was going to ask you about that. The headline was that, seems like you're cool now with the wait and see approach by the Fed, which doesn't sound, it sounds like the, I don't know if the president agrees with that. He has really pushed for lower rates.

BESSENT:  Look, again, I think, I understand why they're doing it. It wouldn't be necessarily my base case.

EISEN:  You'd be cutting.

BESSENT:  I would -- I'd at least be ready to cut and I'd have an open mind that they may have to cut more because they've waited longer.

EISEN:  Why do you think that, why are you so sure that inflation will not creep higher as a whole? You know, obviously, there's oil prices and gas prices, but it filters into the industrial economy. We've seen fertilizer prices rise, which could impact food prices. And there's still, you know, pockets of inflation around electricity and health insurance.

BESSENT:  Well, we're also seeing a lot of things fall. Again, I always, I found when I was in the investment business to kind of line up my facts. So, fertilizer, 75 percent of the planning is already done, that if fertilizer prices don't come down by September or October, then could it be a '27 problem? Sure. But I think that they will, highly competent. And then what we look at, whether it's CPI or PCE, those are lagging measures of inflation. If we look at the real-time data, owner's equivalent, rent—

EISEN:  Softened.

BESSENT:  It has really softened. It's back to 2022 levels, but that gets picked up with a six-month delay in the inflation numbers. We were seeing groceries start to come down. We were seeing the healthcare start to come down.

EISEN:  So, you're pretty convinced that we're on a downward trend on inflation.

BESSENT:  Yeah, well—

EISEN:  Besides oil?

BESSENT:  In core.

EISEN:  In core? In core inflation?

BESSENT:  Yeah, and the market-based indicators are also telling you that there is no transfer in terms of inflation expectations.

EISEN:  What about the impact of the oil price and higher gas prices on the real economy? You started off by talking about how much better the refunds look, up 13 percent. That's money in consumers' pockets, but does it get offset by the higher gas prices?

BESSENT:  It could, but again, I think the gas prices will start coming down pretty quickly. We've had the big declines in the past two weeks. We'll be looking at Treasury to try to keep the retail gas stations honest, that you did this on the way up, better be doing this on the way down. And I'm sure the president will call out anyone who's a bad actor in terms of—

EISEN:  Hmm. That sounds like a warning.

BESSENT:  I am sure that everyone will be a good actor.

EISEN:  So ultimately, impact of the war on the economy is what?

BESSENT:  Well, the classical economic theory would just tell you that it's a push forward. So that this quarter will be slower than it was. I think that the first quarter was moving along well. And we've heard the president say that one of the reasons he believed that he was able to prosecute this war now and you know other than he believed it was the right time to prevent Iran from having a long-term nuclear weapon, and to decapitate the regime was that the economy was in such good shape. That it was the indices were at a high. We're back to a new high. The economy, at Treasury, we have lots of companies come through. In my private business, I never tried to predict GDP or non-farm unemployment to a decimal level, a decibel or decimal level. But we talked to a lot of companies, and we formed a macro view by talking to micro data points. And the micro data points have been great. If you saw what Jamie Dimon said about consumer credit yesterday—

EISEN:  Yeah.

BESSENT: All the credit card, the banks said that the consumer is in good shape. Corporate America, earnings are in good shape. So—

EISEN:  So, do you have a GDP prediction to the, to the decimal?

BESSENT:  Well, it's all going to be path dependent because, again, this conflict is going to end that I don't know whether it's three days or three weeks.

EISEN:  But even if it lasts for months, you still think it's going to be a temporary phenomenon? What's happening with oil?

BESSENT:  Well, it's always -- there's a catch up, there's pent-up demand. You know, we will see. We're seeing very strong CapEx in terms of groundbreakings. Finally, people were saying to me that, well, all these factories aren't coming back. And you're a financial markets person. You started in the, following foreign exchange. In foreign exchange, you can move a billion dollars by pressing a button.

EISEN:  It's crazy.

BESSENT:  With -- when you are in the real economy, to build a billion-dollar factory, there's planning. There's board permission. There's finding the site. There's starting the site. And so, now, we're starting to see a pickup in construction jobs, which will turn into manufacturing jobs. I was in my hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, a couple of months ago, Boeing factory there, they are upping their Dreamliner production, which is made in Charleston by 50 percent. It's going to be a thousand manufacturing jobs, but before that, it's 700 construction jobs.

EISEN:  Yes, I was going to ask you, you know, if there's such a boom in investment in manufacturing, but the output's been a little uneven and the job growth has been sluggish in manufacturing.

BESSENT:  Yeah, but again, I think we're going to see these new facilities—

EISEN:  It's coming.

BESSENT:  Come online, especially pharmaceuticals we've seen. I don't -- I would hazard a guess at a record amount of groundbreaking for new pharmaceutical facilities. I was up in Westchester County at Regeneron that, this is how old I'm getting. I remember when it was a biotech company, now it's a pharmaceutical company, and they're expanding in Westchester County, they're expanding down in North Carolina. And they said a lot of that is due to the tax bill. So, on one side, the tax bill had the four signature policies that we're seeing. And going back to the four signature policies, refunds are big this year. I want to remind anyone who takes advantage of those to adjust their withholding, and then they'll get an automatic fill up in their weekly, monthly income. But you had that for working Americans. And then on the other side for corporate America, the full expensing of equipment, full expensing of factories, and the expensing of R&D. And that's what Regeneron, the management of Regeneron, which is an incredible management, fantastic story. The founder still runs the company.

EISEN:  I remember when the president took it during COVID, the antibody treatment.

BESSENT:  Yes, yes, as they said, we had a cure for COVID but—

EISEN:  They did call it that.

BESSENT:  But they said that their expansion is because of the full expensing—

EISEN:  Yeah.

BESSENT:  For both R&D and facilities.

EISEN:  So, before we leave the Fed, I do want to ask you if you -- what the probability is that Kevin Warsh is the Fed Chair on May 16th, which is officially the end of Fed Chair Powell's term.

BESSENT:  Again, I don't know. I think that Kevin Warsh is a great candidate. Senator Tillis has said that he's a great candidate. And I hope that everyone will work to have him there on May 16th.

EISEN:  Well, Tillis has also said that he's not going to confirm him until the investigation goes away.

BESSENT:  Again, I think people change their minds. Facts change, we'll see.

EISEN:  Are you, are you lobbying for this? Are you working on this?

BESSENT:  Again, I wear a lot of hats.

EISEN:  I know.

BESSENT:  The U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C. is not one of them.

EISEN:  Speaking, speaking of—

BESSENT:  I'm mercifully not a lawyer.

EISEN:  Okay. Speaking of the many hats you wear, I do want to mention, you raised this idea of an executive order coming for banks this week, for banks to be reporting citizenship, and I did want to follow up on that because I've talked to some of the bankers about that, and you might not be surprised to hear they don't think it's their job to have to report citizenship, especially because you don't need to be a citizen to open a bank account. So why are you doing that?

BESSENT:  Why is that? Why can anyone come and open a bank account? That the, if Treasury and the banking regulators say it's their job, it's their job. So why can the unknown foreign nationals come and open a bank account? Like how do they know? What is, what our bank executives' jobs is to know your customer. So how do you know your customer if you don't know if they have legal or illegal status, whether a U.S. citizen or green card holder?

EISEN:  So, you think that there should be stricter rules around it?

BESSENT:  Yes, there should be stricter rules. Every other country does it. Every other country. I lived in the UK for a long time. The UK, the, not only, you know, has strict banking laws, they have strict, they want to know who's in every apartment. I had to go and register every year. It's called the Leave to Remain. So, you know, Biden administration let in, we don't know how many, five, 10, 20 -- 20 million illegal people, and they don't have a right to be in the banking system. The banking system, and it's a credit risk. This company that we saw go under, Tricolor, their business model was lending to illegal aliens. And when two million illegal aliens went home, guess what happened? Guess what they did with their auto loans, right?

EISEN:  Yeah, collapse, which also raises the question of private credit, which has been another sort of lingering concern in the financial markets and system. How much work are you doing on whether this is a systemic threat or a potential risk of a credit crunch?

BESSENT:  So, you know, at Treasury, we monitor all aspects of the capital markets, and private credit is one. I think it's been an important new product, and we're keeping track of it. We are in touch with the firms that provide credit. We are host, we're going to host the 50-state insurance regulators because some of the private credit has gone into the state insurance companies. We're going to have a forum for the offshore reinsurance companies who also buy private credit. We want to make sure that we don't have regulatory authority, but we have convening power. So, we want to make sure that the -- that there's no regulatory arbitrage that's going on between the 50 states, the insurers. And even Jamie Dimon, who I think a couple of months ago said there could be cockroaches with private credit—

EISEN: Yes.

BESSENT:  Came out yesterday and said, like, let's just look at the numbers. It's not big enough to be systemic.

EISEN:  And so, you -- you buy that?

BESSENT:  I believe that it's, none of our work has shown that there would be a systemic problem.

EISEN:  That's good.

BESSENT:  Yeah.

EISEN:  Another lingering concern has been A.I. disruption and what that might do to the software space, to the cyberspace. I know you convened a lot of the folks in the financial services market lately wondering about some of the cyber risk, right, around Anthropic's new update. What is your primary concern there and what'd you find?

BESSENT:  Well, we routinely convene them. The meeting, the meeting that we had was a bit overdramatized. The reason Chair Powell—

EISEN:  Under very urgent and sudden.

BESSENT:  Well, it was urgent 'cause they were all in town. Much better. It was one of those, Chair Powell told me, said, you know, if we want to talk to the banks and kind of move them down the road on resiliency with cybersecurity, all the CEOs are actually here. So, that's why it was hastily convened. But the J-curve and the power of these large language models, you know, you were just jumping from, into the 10th power, into the 12th power very, very quickly. This new Anthropic model is very powerful and we want to, some banks are doing a better job in cybersecurity than others, and we want to have the ability to convene them and talk about what is best practices and where they should be heading.

EISEN:  Do you feel confident that the system is safe?

BESSENT:  I feel confident that everyone is now on board, rowing in the same direction to build up resiliency for cyber. And look, it's been something that since day one, when I got to treasury, we've been emphasizing, and the banks are well aware of it, some at different degrees than other. Others -- some have legacy systems, some are more updated, like with any industry.

EISEN:  What about the risk of A.I. disruption, what that might mean for our economy, for jobs, for software companies? What's your, what's your latest thinking on that?

BESSENT:  My latest thinking is that, that people ask me all the time, especially young people, I say, A.I. is not going to take your job. Someone who knows how to use A.I. is going to take your job. So you should be, I know I'm too old, but say my children, going to be AI natives, just like there were digital natives in the '90s and the aughts. So, I think everyone has to be up to speed on that. I think this was an article yesterday, one of the major papers just saying that computer science as a major is dropping because A.I. is really—

EISEN:  Can do it.

BESSENT:  Well, it can do it. But it's productivity. And at the end of the day, for the overall economy, we're seeing these big productivity gains that we really haven't seen in decades.

EISEN:  Right, which is good. I guess the question is, are we going to see more job loss, especially young folks coming out of college? Because we have seen a tick up in that unemployment rate.

BESSENT:  Yeah, again, I think, I would encourage all of them to be, I don't know what you call it, A.I. literate, conversant, facile. And I think they will be. And to be able to prove your worth to an employer. The other thing too, is like the really optimistic side, when I talk to some of the great investors out in Silicon Valley, they think that A.I. is going to be a great leveler for small business because all of a sudden, like if you wanted to start an architecture firm, if you want to spin out of a big firm, maybe you would have needed 12 people for critical mass, now you just need three. So, I think we could see a big pickup in small business. And at Treasury, all across the government, we're thinking, how can we help enable that in terms of getting AI out to Main Street?

EISEN:  A lot more A.I. talk coming throughout the event today. But I do want to get you on China because the president put out a post saying China is happy with us. I don't know, is China happy with us that we're blockading the Strait of Hormuz? And how are your dialogues going? And is everything on track for the meeting with Xi?

BESSENT:  Yeah, we've got great stability in the relationship. We've had that since last summer, we had a very good meeting between the two leaders in Busan, Korea, in October. We are on track for the mid-May meeting, and the real essence of the relationship stems from the relationship between the two leaders. I think that there is mutual respect, which I'm not sure that Party Chair Xi has for some of the other leaders in the world, and we are approaching this with China that we don't want to decouple, but we need to de-risk. There are five to seven industries, I've talked about it a lot, semiconductor, shipbuilding, steel, medicines, critical minerals that we have to manufacture either in the U.S. or U.S.-adjacent, the precursor chemicals for many of our most important medicines, amoxicillin, I'm sure you gave your children that at some point.

EISEN:  Yes, many times.

BESSENT:  That come from China. So, we've got to reshore all that, but there are things we can do with them. And we can, be big great power rivals, and we want to win that rivalry, but it doesn't have to be at all costs to the relationship.

EISEN:  So, the blockade and the war in Iran has not done any damage.

BESSENT:  President Trump has been communicating again with Xi. And, you know, I believe that the Chinese, like the U.S., want to see the free flow in the Strait of Hormuz.

EISEN:  Are you meeting with your counterpart here in D.C., here, IMF-World Bank meeting?

BESSENT:  My counterpart will not be here. We're meeting, my staff is meeting with some of his staff. We'll probably, we had a meeting about three weeks ago in Paris to set up the agenda for the leaders' meeting on the economic side.

EISEN:  Okay. Well, investors I think will be encouraged that that's on track. Finally, Secretary Bessant, you know, we're going into the midterm elections. The polls don't look great. I know there's also a tight margin in the House. What is the one thing you would like to get done before the midterm elections?

BESSENT:  In terms of, I think we've gotten a lot done, and I think now the war will end, and I think that we can actually see the economy really take off. So, but we've done a lot. When I talk about the President's economic policy, I say it's a three-legged stool, trade, tax, and dereg, and that the dereg is the slowest moving, but in a way, the most powerful. And I think the more dereg that we can get done at Treasury, I chair something called FSOC, Financial Stability Oversight Council. I convene the financial regulators, and we have seen a reasonable amount of safe, sound and smart deregulation in the financial industry. And I think we should see more of that because when you talk about private credit, why did private credit spring into existence? Spring into existence because it was filling a need that the regulatory -- the regulated financial system was in this finan -- regulatory straitjacket. And now, we are trying to put them on a level playing field. You know, there was an arbitrage between the regulated industry, the unregulated industry, and the banks have lots of lending capacity. We saw 50 percent, five-O percent of small and community banks disappear since the GFC. So, you know, like when Elizabeth Warren says, oh, I'm worried about the banking system, well, she killed it. She killed Main Street banks.

EISEN:  Hmm, look at that headline.

BESSENT:  And Main Street banks they drive Main Street lending. It is, it is the commercial, small business loans, ag loans.

EISEN:  That's why you're deregulating.

BESSENT:  That's why we're deregulating. We -- there's the saying, too big to fail, and Dodd-Frank created too small to succeed. And the regulators, the -- like this regulatory regime, the FDIC was out of control. And you know, we've seen that whether it's the way people behaved, the two other employees there, they did regulation by supervision, which you can't do. You've got to have principles. You stick with them. You know, all the regulators, they are supposed to sing from the same hymnal and up until the GFC, we were seeing about 50 new small banks created every year. Since then, it's been two or three. Now we're ramping back up. So, you know, I think this is a great opportunity for Main Street. I think I had a meeting at Treasury, small bank from my home state, South Carolina. And a woman who owns it said, I've 17 employees, three are focused on compliance, and the regulator told me I should have the same compliance level as Bank of America. She knows everyone she lends to. It's a small community. She's been there three generations. Bank's been going a long time. So, we want to give them the tools to succeed.

EISEN:  So that's more to come.

BESSENT:  More to come.

EISEN:  It sounds like. I thought you were going to say the CLARITY Act. Why is that not passed?

BESSENT:  Well, CLARITY Act, there's been a lot of back and forth. I think we will know. I think we've got to move quickly on that. I think we'll know the fate of the CLARITY Act in the next two or three weeks. I was talking to some of the senators yesterday. I am confident it will get across the line.

EISEN:  You do, you do a lot on a day.

BESSENT:  It's the busiest day I've ever had every day. It's an honor to serve the American people.

EISEN:  Well, Secretary Bessent, we appreciate you making the time to come talk to us here for Invest in America. It was a perfect way to set up the entire day. So, thank you.

BESSENT:  Good. Thank you, Sara.

EISEN:  Thank you very much. Thank you.