WHEN: Today, Tuesday, November 4, 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 4. Following are links to video on CNBC.com: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/11/04/treasury-sec-scott-bessent-on-tariffs-other-authorities-can-be-used-depending-on-scotus-ruling.html and https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/11/04/watch-cnbcs-full-interview-with-treasury-secretary-scott-bessent.html.
All references must be sourced to CNBC.
JOE KERNEN: Treasury Secretary is joining us now, Scott Bessent. We worked on that, that segue, Mr. Treasury Secretary. I hope you liked it. How are you? Good to see you.
U.S. TREASURY SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: Good morning, Joe. Good to see you.
KERNEN: You, let’s talk tariffs and since it’s front and center for everyone with this beginning now at SCOTUS, you have said you’re going and you want to be in the front row. I think your, I think your chances are good if you say that’s where you’d like to sit.
BESSENT: Look, Joe, I think it’s a matter of national security. And this is one of the president’s signature policies. And it’d be very unusual for the Supreme Court to overrule president’s signature policy. Supreme Court gave President Obama a lot of room on Obamacare. And President Trump’s two signature policies have been securing the border, which has been an incredible success. And it has been the tariff policy rebalancing U.S. trade. And, you know, it’s economic security. And we’ve had three emergencies here. First emergency has been the fentanyl crisis. And the president was able to use IEEPA to bring the Chinese to the table on the precursor chemicals. A second emergency was, I think, we were at a tipping point in terms of our trade deficits. We are bringing those down. The deficit with China is down 25 percent. We could have had a looming financial crisis. And then, number three, the president, after the Chinese said that they were going to put export controls on rare earth minerals for the globe on October 8th, president was able to use his IEEPA emergency powers to threaten 100 percent tariffs, bring the Chinese to the table in Kuala Lumpur and Korea, and get the rare earths to flow. And if that hadn’t happened, the manufacturing facilities, not only in the U.S., but around the world would shut down. So, you know, this is an emergency power that he has used during emergencies.
KERNEN: There might be compelling arguments on the other side, Mr. Secretary. And I like the Journal kind of made me laugh today because in their lead op-ed, they said few conservatives are more deferential not to President Trump, but to presidential overseas authority than we are. They’ve stood in the way of a lot of things, I think, that the president has tried to do, obviously, although, you know, out of all the op-ed pages, the friendliest probably has been the “Wall Street Journal.” But they point out that Article 1 vests Congress with authority, and that was the intent because of what happened with taxation without representation, that it vests Congress with the authority to negotiate trade deals and to impose tariffs. And it was like that until Smoot-Hawley in 1930, when they thought the president needed to be able to have that authority. But up until then, it had always been the purview of Congress to regulate tariff policy.
BESSENT: Yeah, Joe, but there are lots of other authorities, too. The president has 232s, 301s. Those are all from the executive branch. And again, you know, IEEPA is an emergency authority, and we were in an emergency situation, and this is crucial for the — for the U.S. economy.
KERNEN: But do you think, Mr. Secretary, that the Supreme Court is so up-to-date on these stories, this is — here’s where I’m going with this. A lot of people would probably say the trade imbalance has been there for a long time, and that all of a sudden it’s an emergency. They would question that. I don’t know what they’d say about fentanyl, but when you talk about rare earth metals and what that could do to the U.S. economy, that, I think, even SCOTUS, even Supreme Court might say, you know what, in this case, the emergency power is absolutely, you know, you could actually use that in that case and be totally justified. Do you think that they could look at it that way?
BESSENT: Well, Joe, let’s think about it. And as you know, in economics, there’s a concept of a tipping point. And, you know, I think that there’s a point where you get to an emergency. What if someone had held up their hand, like many people did before the great financial crisis, and said, we’re heading for a calamity in the housing market? And if someone had exercised emergency powers then, we would not have had to go through 2008, 2009, and the aftermath and what it did to the American people.
KERNEN: Let’s just ask you one more thing, one more point the journal makes. If the court blesses this unlimited presidential tariff power, future presidents, i.e. Democrats, are going to do the same thing. An all too likely example would be a climate emergency. I could see this happening. They call it that all the time, an emergency to tax imports of countries with high CO2 commissions. You can fill in the blanks for something that Democrats might do if this were upheld by the Supreme Court. Does that concern you at all, about what the other party would do with this type of power?
BESSENT: Look, if the president does need emergency power, and I would question whether there’s a climate emergency. You know, I’ve been hearing for years that there’s an emergency. The planet’s going to be on fire in five years, ten years. And the only thing that’s happened with that is an excuse for my children not to do their homework because there’s not going to be a planet. So, you know, it’s all been proven wrong.
KERNEN: Or not to have kids. I know. It’s crazy. Beck?
BECKY QUICK: Mr. Secretary, thanks for being with us today. We’re now in day 35 of this government shutdown, tied for the longest government shutdown ever. The Hill has just been reporting in the last couple of hours that some centrist Democrats are signaling to their Republican counterparts that they might be willing to cut a deal, that we could see an end to this coming soon. I think Susan Collins had kind of suggested maybe we see an end to this by the end of this week. But they’re also saying, some of these centrist Democrats, that a red flag is that the president may not be serious about health care reform. Can you tell us what the administration’s plan is on this front? What you’re hearing about any of these talks? What you know?
BESSENT: So, Becky, you know, I’ve called for five brave Democrats to come across the aisle. And, you know, what’s changed since we got the clean continuing resolution in the spring? Two things. One, Senator Schumer’s poll numbers, you know, he’s sinking like a stone. So, we’re being held hostage to his poll numbers. And then, two, the Democrats have tried to stop President Trump in the courts. It goes to SCOTUS. They get overruled. They’ve tried to stop President Trump in the mainstream media. That hasn’t worked. So, now they’ve shut down the government, and they’re harming the economy. So, I think it would be great if five moderate Democrats became heroes, reopen the government, and for the entire shutdown, the entire shutdown, whether it’s President Trump, Speaker Johnson or Leader Thune, they’ve said, reopen the government, and we can have the conversation on health care, but we can’t do it while the government’s closed down.
KERNEN: What should that conversation look like, Mr. Secretary? Because it’s also been pointed out, yeah, the subsidies were pandemic-era subsidies and, you know, you need those to keep some premiums from doubling for people. But the real thing is it’s the Unaffordable Care Act. The premiums are going up because the cost is going up. And there’s no way to provide Affordable Care Act services without numbers like that. How do you — is there a plan? Because the president has talked about a plan for a long time. And here we are.
BESSENT: Joe, I’m not going to get into negotiations until the Democrats reopen the government. So, you know, I’m not going to preview it. Reopen the government and then the talks can start. And, you know, the crazy thing is they kept talking about a November 21st deadline. And we’re getting there. And they haven’t reopened the government so, and we’re starting to see this affect the economy. We’re starting to see the airport delays and shutdowns. And I can tell you the American people are going to blame the Democrats if the busiest travel day of the year, the day after Thanksgiving, is a disaster. People aren’t able to be with their families. They should be ashamed.
KERNEN: There’s an election today in various places, Mr. Secretary. There’s the highest economic official in our country. And we’re sitting in the capital — capitalist center of the universe right here in New York City. And we might elect either a socialist if you talk to one person or if you talk to the president himself, a communist. What is your take on what’s happening in New York City, how it could affect the country writ large?
BESSENT: Well, Joe, New York is losing its status as the capital of capital. The United States is maintaining it. They’re opening Y’all Street down in Texas. And, you know, Wall Street jobs have been fleeing New York. What we saw during the pandemic was the greatest transfer of wealth in history from Manhattan County to Palm Beach County. And I can tell you that if you get Caracas on the Hudson, which it looks like the polls are saying you’re going to get, you’re going to see more people, more capital fleeing. So, it’s good for Connecticut real estate, good for Florida real estate. And nothing says that New York has to remain the financial capital.
KERNEN: Secretary, I — we always get to some of the interesting water cooler type stuff. And I guess Tesla and shareholders are going to decide on a pay package. The latest I’ve seen, and I loved your answer that you gave, was there was some kind of kerfuffle you had, not with Bill Pulte in this case, which we’ve — which we’ve asked you about in the past. This one involved Elon Musk, that you grabbed him by the collar or something. And your only response was that can’t be true because he didn’t have a collar. I think he has a scruff of his neck. Was there any grabbing of anything in that general area, Mr. Secretary?
BESSENT: Yeah, no Joe. Look, this is — this is old news. And, you know, Jesse Watters has a great, great sense of humor. And Elon and I were very passionate about what needed to be done with government. He did a fantastic job in setting a trajectory for downsizing government, which we’ve continued. Spending is down over the past two quarters. We’re going to keep it down. And what’s gone unnoticed during the government shutdown is we actually had a smaller deficit for fiscal year ’25 than we did for ’24. It was small, but nonetheless, the deficit was smaller. And because the GDP went up, deficit to GDP went from 6.4 percent to 5.9. And I think we can continue bringing that down.
KERNEN: Are you OK with that compensation package? And then I know Andrew has a question.
BESSENT: Well, I think it’s great that Elon’s back in the private sector. He’s one of the great entrepreneurs of the generation. That’s up for the shareholders to decide. But the amount of value that he’s created for his investors and for his shareholders is phenomenal. And it’s across a range of industries.
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: Mr. Secretary, I wanted to actually go back to the issue of New York and the prospect that Zohran Mamdani could be the next mayor. The president made a comment during the “60 Minutes” interview on Sunday that potentially the administration would, or Washington writ large, would send less money to New York as a result of that, in part because he said, you know, you don’t want a communist effectively in charge that would then misspend such money. How much discretion does the administration have in terms of its ability to turn on the spigot or turn off the spigot to a particular state and in what areas?
BESSENT: Well, I think it’s on a lot of the large infrastructure, a lot of the large infrastructure spending. And, Andrew, I think we can see that we have some discretion here in D.C., but the real discretion is people voting with their feet. You see these Democratic states. New York has for years had net outbound migration. Illinois net outbound migration. California net outbound migration. So, it seems like more money should go to the states that people are moving to.
KERNEN: Mr. Secretary, if the Supreme Court were to go against the president on this, are you confident that another route can be found to continue with the policy and not get into the morass of trying to be? I don’t — I don’t even know how it would work if you had to, you know, start reversing some of the — what we’ve seen with the tariffs.
BESSENT: Yeah, Joe, there are lots of other authorities that can be used, but IEEPA is by far the cleanest, and it gives the U.S. and the president the most negotiating authority. And, again, when we get something like October 8th, where the entire manufacturing ecosystem in the U.S. and the world was at threat of shutdown, then it’s very important to be able to have these. The others are more cumbersome, but they can be effective, lest it hinders the president’s negotiating ability to be able to protect the American people and the American economy. So, you know, this is very important tomorrow, and SCOTUS is going to hear this. And, again, this is a signature policy for the president, and traditionally SCOTUS has been loath to interfere with these signature policies.
KERNEN: I guess I’ll just ask you one quick question on China. A lot of talk about what actually went on with NVIDIA chips and the Blackwell chips. Are you among the people in the administration that think that China should never get those highly advanced AI chips? Or is this saving something to negotiate the future with? Because it always seems like these are stops along the way with these negotiations with China. They’re evolving, and we continue to, you know, to deal with things, and they continue to deal with things.
BESSENT: Well, you know, if we think about the Blackwell now, they’re the crown jewel. 18, 12, 18 months ago, the H20s were so good, were the crown jewels. So, Joe, I think what you’re describing is actually the pace that the technology is moving, not the pace that the negotiations are moving. So, there may be a case down the road. I don’t know whether it’s 12 or 24 months. Given the incredible innovation that goes on at NVIDIA, where the Blackwell chips may be two, three, four down their chip stack in terms of efficacy, and at that point they could be sold on.
KERNEN: And it’s your take, your contention, that China had a plan with these rare earth materials. This was in the works. And whether President Trump had poked the bear in the first place to try to reset global trade with China, either way that — that would have been something that China was planning to use. So, it’s not like, you know, the president, you know, critics say starts fire and then puts a fire out and takes credit for, you know, for putting it out.
BESSENT: Absolutely not. This is something that they’ve been putting together for 35 years. The rare earth magnets company actually used to belong to General Motors. A Chinese company bought it. CFIUS, which is the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., said they had to keep it in the U.S. for five years, five years and a day. In 2000, they moved it over to China. They’ve been accumulating these rare earth assets for years. And, Joe, it’s important to know that they put this restriction on the entire world. So, you know, don’t accuse President Trump of doing this. But what I can tell you is after the meeting in Korea, it was a very good meeting. Both sides approached it with great respect. I think President Trump is the only leader who President Xi respects. We had a very good meeting. The relationship is in a good place. I think we’re going to have two state visits next year. President Trump will be going to Beijing and Xi will be coming to the U.S. And they may also see each other at the G20 in Doral and then the APEC conference in Shenzhen in November. So, I think the overall U.S.-China relationship is on a much more even keel now.
KERNEN: Secretary Bessent, thank you so much, as always. We appreciate it.
BESSENT: Good to see you, Joe.
KERNEN: Good to see you.
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