Out Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave an impassioned defense of Donald Trump’s tariffs, which will raise prices on consumer goods for Americans. Bessent, a hedge fund manager and a billionaire, said that “cheap goods” aren’t important to the “American dream.”

“Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream,” he told the Economic Club of New York. “The American Dream is rooted in the concept that any citizen can achieve prosperity, upward mobility, and economic security. For too long, the designers of multilateral trade deals have lost sight of this.”

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His comments come just as the Trump administration imposed 25% tariffs on goods produced by three of America’s closest trading partners: Canada, Mexico, and China. Tariffs are taxes imposed on imported goods and the cost of those taxes is mostly passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices. The stock market tumbled as a result, and later in the week, Trump delayed some of the tariffs for several weeks.

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The 2024 Trump campaign largely benefited from anger about inflation earlier in the Biden administration, which reached a height of 9% in 2022. An exit poll found that 75% of voters said that inflation had caused them moderate or severe hardship. During his campaign, Trump promised to end inflation and even promised to somehow enact deflation to bring prices down.

But after he won the election, Trump was quick to say that prices would not be coming down. Instead, he turned his attention to tariffs, which will raise prices further.

Bessent has long been a proponent of tariffs, calling for a 2.5% across-the-board tariff that would increase monthly by 2.5%.

“Across a continuum, I’m not worried about inflation,” Bessent continued.

He also mentioned the stock market, which faced significant losses this week after the tariffs were announced. “Wall Street’s done great, Wall Street can continue doing well. But this administration is about Main Street,” he said.

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