Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent feels disheartened after research from his alma mater claimed families will be about $2,400 worse off this year thanks to President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
“I will point out that the Yale Budget Lab is mostly staffed by Biden and Democratic alumni, so they have a particular point of view. It is not nonpartisan,” Bessent told MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Thursday. “Unfortunately, it’s my alma mater, which makes me sad.”
Bessent brushed off the analysis from the Budget Lab at Yale, the Ivy League university he graduated from in 1984, after Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough pressed him on the economic fallout from Trump’s aggressive tariff agenda.
On Aug. 1, the Budget Lab estimated that Trump’s “reciprocal” tariff plan for dozens of countries, which came into effect Thursday, would cost households an average of $2,400, with items such as shoes being “disproportionately” affected by rising prices because of the global higher import tax rates.
The Budget Lab also predicted that Americans will face an average tax of 18.3 percent for imported products due to Trump’s tariffs, the highest rate since 1934.
Economists have long said the tariffs—which now range from 10 percent for the U.K., to 41 percent for Syria, and potentially 50 percent on India—will hit U.S. consumers hardest as prices for everyday goods and materials rise.
Trump had a different take on what his global trade war means, posting in a typical all-caps Truth Social rant just before midnight ET that “BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN TARIFFS ARE NOW FLOWING INTO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!”
On Thursday, Scarborough suggested to Bessent that Wall Street has mostly “absorbed the shock” of Trump’s tariffs, which were announced on the president’s “Liberation Day,” April 2.
The Morning Joe host asked if markets can keep up, if Main Street will survive, and whether the new tariffs are “inflationary.”
“What we’ve seen thus far is they haven’t been,” Bessent said. “Wall Street is forward-looking. It lives in the future, and inflation has been coming down in the U.S.
“What we’re seeing is the manufacturers overseas are absorbing some of that, retailers are absorbing some of that, and part of our plan is to have real income growth for working-class Americans,” he added.
The Yale Budget Lab did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
