Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the Trump administration has “70 negotiations lined up” with foreign governments on a wave of tariffs that kicked in overnight.
“I am not planning on going anywhere for Easter,” Bessent told an audience of bankers in Washington, DC. “We have been overwhelmed with the response to come to DC and negotiate with President Trump.”
“I think what a lot of people are missing here is that the levels that were put out last Wednesday are a ceiling … if you don’t retaliate,” he added.
Follow the latest on President Trump’s tariffs
The 62-year-old hedge fund mogul also warned countries against trying to cozy up to Beijing in a bid to offset any lost trading volume with the United States.
“That would be cutting your own throat,” Bessent said. “We can probably reach a deal with our allies … and then we can approach China as a group.”
‘The Big Short’ investor Steve Eisman, who predicted the 2008 global financial crisis, told The Post that he expected foreign governments to come “groveling” to President Donald Trump to end his tariff trade war.
“The other countries in the world can yell and scream all they want, but when you’re going to sit down at that poker table, they don’t hold too many cards because they all need to sell stuff to the United States,” the ex-Oppenheimer and Neuberger Bermann money man said.
“You’re not going to get other countries to move off their tariffs and VAT rates by saying ‘Hey come to the White House. Let’s have a state dinner. We will have a nice talk afterwards,” the lead anchor of the Eisman Playbook podcast added. “You have to put a gun to people’s heads….It’s a high-stakes move.”
Trump announced his tariff plans on April 2, which he dubbed “Liberation Day,” as he set out a range of levies that started at a 10% baseline and went up to 50% for those he saw as the worst trade offenders.
Bessent also downplayed talk of the US economy tipping into recession, which is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth.
“The companies I have spoken to … CEOs who have come into Treasury, tell me that the economy is very solid. We got very good jobs numbers last Friday. I think that we are in pretty good shape,” he added.
The former money man, who founded Key Square Group, made his remarks in a Q&A session following a speech to the American Bankers Association on banking regulation and supervision.
Bessent’s comments as JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warned that a recession is a “likely outcome” from Trump’s tariffs.
Dimon said he is hearing “recessionary talk” and although he is not seeing defaults yet, he expects it to happen.
He added that volatility from tariffs is “serious” and that the goal of trade deals should be to make trading partners stronger, not weaker.
A native of South Carolina, Bessent previously served as chief investment officer for George Soros and was instrumental in the Hungarian-born money man’s “Black Wednesday” trade in 1992.
The bet against the British pound “broke the Bank of England,” raking in an eye-watering $1 billion payday for Soros that cemented his reputation as a titan of global finance.
