WHEN: Today, Tuesday, November 25, 2025
WHERE: CNBC’s “Squawk Box”
Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” (M-F, 6AM-9AM ET) today, Tuesday, November 25. Following are links to video on CNBC.com: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/11/25/watch-cnbcs-full-interview-with-treasury-secretary-scott-bessent.html and https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/11/25/treasury-secretary-scott-bessent-very-good-chance-trump-names-new-fed-chair-before-christmas.html.
All references must be sourced to CNBC.
BECKY QUICK: Welcome back to “Squawk Box.” President Trump announcing that he will be visiting Beijing in April following a phone call with Chinese President Xi. The two continued their discussions on China’s agreement to purchase U.S. soybeans while the U.S. lowers tariffs on China. Joining us right now with more on the U.S.-China trade latest is Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. And, Mr. Secretary, thank you very much for being with us this morning.
SCOTT BESSENT: Good morning, Becky. Good morning, Andrew.
QUICK: Why don’t we start with this latest? What we’re seeing right now and what we’ve heard from this conversation with President Trump and President Xi. The readouts from the two countries were a little different. Obviously, the United States has a very important push on making sure that China does step up its purchases of soybeans. How is that going?
BESSENT: Well, first of all, Becky, to set the record straight, President Trump initiated the call 30 days after the historic meeting in Busan, South Korea, between the two leaders. They have a great relationship. And as far as the soybeans, the Chinese are right on schedule in terms of the cadence of their purchases. Over the next three and a half years, we’re going to see the 87.5 million metric tons purchased by the Chinese minimum, minimum. And they are right on schedule.
QUICK: There have been some reports coming from China where their take on this talk is a little different. At least what they emphasized in the talks was a little different. They bring up both Ukraine and the U.S. position, and the China, Chinese position on Taiwan. What is the U.S. position on Taiwan at this point?
BESSENT: U.S. position on Taiwan is unchanged. And on Ukraine, President and Party Chair Xi agreed that the peace in this Ukraine conflict, they must move forward, and they agreed to work together on it.
QUICK: Am I right to think that this is a truce, but maybe a little bit of an uneasy truce at this point? How secure and settled are you feeling with where we stand with China right now?
BESSENT: Well, we have, we have a one year, what I would say, pause. And, Becky, what I feel very good about is the relationship between the leaders because when the leaders can have calls like this at the highest level, then bad things don’t happen. It was the strong relationship. President Trump showing leadership that sort of calm things down between the two countries. And look, we’re always going to be rivals. We’re always going to be rivals. That’s natural. But are there things we can do together? Yes, we have the relationship in a good place. President Trump is going to do a state visit to Beijing. Xi is going to come to the U.S. for a state visit. He’ll also be in the U.S. for the G20 at Doral. And President Trump may attend the APEC summit in Shenzhen in November. So, if there are four meetings during the year, I think that that gives the relationship great stability and stability is good for the American people and good for the world economy.
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: Mr. Secretary, I wanted to pivot the conversation. We’ve been talking all fall with you about the prospect of the president selecting a new Fed chair. And as we get closer to the end of the year, I wanted to get an update as to where things perhaps stand right now.
BESSENT: Yeah. So, we’re going to have the last interview in the second round today, Andrew. We have five very strong candidates. I’m impressed with all of them. And, Andrew, I’ll tell you, one of the things in terms of the criteria that I’ve been looking for, that I have morphed a bit on in the fall when we started with 11 candidates, is in talking to these candidates, I realize the Fed has become this very complicated operation. It’s no longer just a price setting of money. There’s a very complicated calculus between the monetary policy, the, the balance sheet and regulatory policy. And we’ve really emphasized in the interviews what’s the interplay for that calculus in terms of, you know, the best way forward for the American economy and what the, what is, what is each person’s point of view in terms of protecting the American people, protecting the economy and moving forward with the dual mandate?
SORKIN: Can you, can you give us a hint? We often talk about the two Kevins, Kevin Warsh and Kevin Hassett, being the frontrunners. Is that still the case?
BESSENT: Andrew, I’m, still got one interview left, so I don’t think it would be prudent to give any hints. And I think that there’s very good chance that the president will make an announcement before Christmas. But it’s his prerogative, whether it’s the, before the Christmas holidays, and the New Year’s. But things are moving along very well.
QUICK: Mr. Secretary, last week the president, I’m not sure if he was joking or how serious he was about it. He said he loves everything you’re doing, but if you don’t get the Fed to lower interest rates soon, he might fire your butt.
BESSENT: Well, the, Becky, if you were in the, if you were in the room, he was joking. And you know, the, again, I think that we’ve gotten to this point where monetary policy has gotten very complicated and it’s more than just cutting rates. We’ve got this balance sheet and what are we going to do with it? You know, the Fed has taken us into a new regime in what is called ample reserves regime. And it looks like that might be fraying a bit here in terms of whether the reserves are actually ample in the system. There are all these facilities and operations, the standing repo facility. And I think we’ve got to kind of simplify things. The other thing too, is that when you were on with Steve Liesman, you were showing all the Fed governors and the regional bank presidents kind of like baseball cards. And I think it’s time for the Fed to just to move back into the background, like it used to do, calm things down and work for the American people, set monetary policy on a good course. That this isn’t the, you know, this isn’t sport. It’s people’s lives. And I think we just need to calm down. All these speeches by these bank presidents that are just redundant. Why don’t they actually just come out and talk about the, you know, meaningful issues in the American people rather than the short-term view of the next meeting?
QUICK: Well, to be fair, the Fed governors, you know, the presidents of the banks at least are hearing from people in their districts and each of them maybe hearing slightly different things about where the job market lays, where inflation lays. And that’s probably useful information to hear from around the country. I guess. My bigger question—
BESSENT: No, no, but hold on for a minute, Becky—
QUICK: Yeah.
BESSENT: Is that the, but that’s not what they’re talking about. That’s not what they’re talking about in their district. They’re talking about some macro and—
QUICK: Well, Susan Collins was saying she hears about inflation. She was just on last week with Steve Liesman, the Boston Fed president. And she was saying that she does hear a lot about inflation from within her district. That was kind of the part of that interview that jumped out to me the most.
BESSENT: Well, the other thing I’ll tell you that I find very interesting is, you know, these regional presidents were supposed to be people from the district, and it was supposed to break the New York hold on the reserve banks. And, you know, we’ve got at least three, maybe four of the reserve banks where people were hired from outside the district. They don’t — they don’t even live in their district. They commute back to New York. So, these are New Yorkers. They are going out into the country and then coming back on weekends. I’m not sure that’s the way the Federal Reserve was designed.
SORKIN: Mr. Secretary, I’m curious how you grapple with this question. The president and I believe you yourself have talked about perhaps the need to lower interest rates. The president has clearly made that case. You know, if you, if you listen to some of these Fed governors, including Neel Kashkari and others, as they’re trying to balance what appears to be, you know, an increase in unemployment or seemingly a little bit more unemployment against inflation fears — how do you balance that in your mind right now, given the sort of clash of those two issues?
BESSENT: Well, Neel Kashkari is a regional bank president, not a governor. And what I think is interesting is that the governors seem to be leaning toward cutting rates. And you know, again, Andrew, what I want to go back to is we’ve now got this very complicated calculus. And I believe, you know, when you’re looking at monetary policy, you know what happened in the past, the, you try to have a view of what’s happening now, and then you have a view of the future. And I think that the mistake that we’re seeing a lot of times is either looking at them of looking in the rearview mirror, we’re flying a little blind with the numbers here, but we’ve had two cuts thus far. And what do we know? That the Schumer shutdown, the longest in history, has shaved 1.5 percent of GDP, at least an $11 billion permanent hit. So, we know the economy hasn’t gotten better. So, I’m not even sure what the discussion is here.
SORKIN: And, Mr. Secretary, I had actually, maybe a curveball, maybe not. It was a curveball, I think, for all of us. I was curious what your reaction was watching the meeting between the president and the mayor-elect of New York, Mamdani. We’ve talked about the mayor-elect, us, on the air before, and some of the president’s views about socialism and the like. It does seem like they were at least buddy-buddy on the issue of affordability.
BESSENT: Well, Andrew, I was in the room, and I think that you’ve got to have some admiration for a candidate who ran a campaign the way he did. It was a great, great campaign. He is clearly the leader of the Democratic Party now. And I think it speaks to how open minded the president is that he invited him into the Oval. Senator Schumer never endorsed him. I don’t even know if he’s met with him. And President Trump wants the best for New Yorkers. I can tell you my impression of the mayor-elect is he’s a young man with a lot of old ideas that have never worked. And point, point to one example where policies like his have led to anything other than a decline. But President Trump wants the best for the American people, and he hopes that New York will do well. It’s easy to run a campaign, but the practical everyday of keeping, keeping people safe, picking up the trash, making the subways run on time, we’ll see.
QUICK: Secretary Bessent, affordability has certainly been the keyword, particularly since those elections, not just of Mamdani but of the Democrats who won in both New Jersey and in Virginia. And there are a lot of questions about how to get our arms around those things. Healthcare is a big issue. The ACA tax credits being a big issue, too. There were reports that yesterday, the president had been considering saying that he would extend the Obamacare tax subsidies at least for a year until things can get worked out. MS NOW and other places are reporting that, that was kind of shut down. But I wonder if you could tell us what the administration’s plan is on this front, what you think the best way forward is just in terms of trying to figure how, what to do on both a short-term and a long-term basis?
BESSENT: Well, let’s go back and just talk about affordability. On March 12th, 2024, the, I wrote a piece that got published and it was on the three I’s that were the, hurting the American people. It was immigration, interest rates, inflation. We can come back to it. I would add the insanity, and the insanity on the Democratic side. So, we got four I’s. Immigrate, this mass, unfettered immigration is now under control. The border’s secure, which couldn’t be done. That was putting substantial downward pressure on working class wages, upward pressure on rent for working people. Two, interest rates have come down. The bond market has had its best year since 2020. So, you can, you can mark those off. And now, we’re working on the inflation. And this insanity of the Democratic Party shutting the government down. Now we’ve got this brinksmanship. They wanted, we’ll reopen the government if you’ll talk about health care. They wouldn’t. And now here we are kind of on the eve. But I’m not involved in the conversation. I know President Trump wants working Americans to keep more of their money, cut out the insurance companies, and we’ll see. He’s the president of solutions, and I’m sure that we will have a solution to this.
QUICK: The front page of “The Wall Street Journal” has an article today talking about how the economy is kind of addicted to AI spending. It points out that business investment in AI might have accounted for as much as half of the growth in the gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, in the first six months of the year, and questions whether if growth in that sector slows down, whether it tanks the entire economy. What, what’s your thought on that?
BESSENT: Yes. So, Becky, two weeks ago, I was at my hometown in Charleston, South Carolina. Boeing was doing a substantial expansion of their plant for the Dreamliner, thousands new great high-paying jobs. And I think next year, all the trade deals, and thanks to the tax bill, we’re going to see, we’re going to see a broadening out of the CapEx cycle. So, what we are seeing is that CapEx is spreading out. And historically, CapEx always leads to more jobs. This AI build out has been tremendous. It will continue to be. And you know, I would echo what my friend Joe Lonsdale said, that in the competition with the Chinese, this is pass-fail. That if we don’t maintain our AI leadership, then everything else we’re doing will be put to the side. But I’m very excited about the prospects for substantial non-inflationary growth last year because also the deregulation is going to kick in. And, you know, to go back to your question on the Fed, this is where I think we may be the, in a 1990s scenario. And Alan Greenspan had the ability to have a framework before looking, look at the productivity that was going on. And I think we’re seeing that same kind of productivity here. So that’s why I think you can have lower interest rates, higher growth and higher productivity.
QUICK: Secretary Bessent, thank you for your time. We appreciate it, sir.
BESSENT: Good. And tell Joe I hope he feels better.
QUICK: We will. Thank you.
BESSENT: Thanks.
SORKIN: Thank you.
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