Scott Bessent, founder and chief executive officer of Key Square Group LP, during an interview in Washington, DC, US, on Friday, June 7, 2024.
Stefani Reynolds | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The U.S. stock market appeared to cheer President-elect Donald Trump’s presumptive nominee for Treasury secretary, who told CNBC earlier this month that he sees an era of strong growth and lower inflation ahead.
Stock market futures rose and Treasury yields tumbled early Monday following the announcement late Friday that Trump would pick Scott Bessent, a familiar Wall Street figure, to take on his administration’s most important economic role.
The move sent a message that Trump wants someone with strong market credentials as well as a similar philosophy for the role.
“This pick should please markets given Bessent’s in-depth understanding of financial markets and the economy – in particular the bond market the Trump administration will need to keep on [its] side if it is to advance its agenda successfully,” Sarah Bianchi, chief strategist of international political affairs and public policy and other colleagues at Evercore ISI wrote in a note.
Bianchi added that markets “couldn’t have done much better” than Bessent.
Since Trump’s victory earlier this month, in which he also carried a red wave that flipped the Senate to Republicans and retained GOP control of the House, markets have been mostly positive albeit volatile. In particular, bond yields have scaled higher, with some interpreting the move as anticipating another leg up for inflation while others see it as traders pricing in stronger growth.
10-year Treasury
In a CNBC interview the day after Trump’s victory, and before the announcement that he would be nominated, Bessent said he expected the new president’s agenda to help bring down inflation while simultaneously stimulating growth.
“The one thing he doesn’t want is a replay of what we’ve just got under Biden-Harris,” Bessent said.
“President Trump has some very good ideas, but I guarantee you, the last thing he wants is to cause inflation,” he added. “I don’t think the bond market is worried about Trump 2.0 inflation. I think what you’re seeing is a healthy move geared toward a growth impetus.”
Though some investors worry that the tariffs Trump has talked about implementing could cause inflation, Bessent said he favors that they be “layered in” so as not to cause anything more than short-term adjustments.
“If you take that price adjustment coupled with all the other disinflationary things President Trump is talking about, we’re going to be at or below the 2% inflation target” that the Federal Reserve prefers, he said.
Moving in threes
Bessent favors a three-pronged approach that addresses worries over the ballooning national debt and deficits: growing the economy at a 3% rate, knocking down the budget deficit to 3% of gross domestic product — less than half where it stands now — and adding three million barrels a day in oil production.
Wall Street commentary was almost universally positive.
Perpetual market bull Tom Lee, head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors, noted that “Bessent lends substantial economic and market credibility to the incoming cabinet.”
“In our view, this reinforces the market’s perception of a ‘Trump put’ — that is, the incoming White House wants equities to perform well,” Lee wrote.
Early indications are that Bessent, who had a long history of supporting Democratic causes before backing Trump during his first run in 2016, should face little trouble getting confirmed.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) signaled perhaps some trouble from the political left, saying in a statement over the weekend that Bessent’s “expertise is helping rich investors make more money, not cutting costs for families squeezed by corporate profiteering … I do not know if Mr. Bessent will transfer his loyalty from Wall Street investors to America’s workers, but I am willing to work with anyone to advance the interests of working families.”
However, Washington policy expert Greg Valliere, chief U.S. policy strategist at AGF Investments, said Bessent should “sail to confirmation” and would join current Sen. Marco Rubio, whom Trump intends to nominate as secretary of State, “in the moderate wing of the Cabinet, with support in both parties.”
Bessent “could play could play an important counterbalance to Commerce Secretary nominee, Howard Lutnick, as Trump pursues an aggressive trade agenda,” wrote Ed Mills, Washington policy analyst at Raymond James.
“The more President Trump’s agenda can be achieved through economic growth versus significant budget cuts, we would expect the market to view that as a positive,” Mills said.
Johnson & Johnson manufacturing facility in Wilson, North Carolina.
Courtesy: Johnson & Johnson
Data from the New York Federal Reserve shows a majority of companies have passed along at least some of President Donald Trump’s tariffs onto customers, the latest in a growing body of evidence indicating the policy change is likely to stretch consumers’ wallets.
In May, about 77% of service firms that saw increased costs due to higher U.S. tariffs tariffs passed through at least at least some of the rise to clients, according to a survey conducted by the New York Fed that was released Wednesday. Around 75% of manufacturers surveyed said the same.
In fact, more than 30% of manufacturers and roughly 45% of service firms passed through all of the higher cost to their customers, according to the New York Fed’s statics.
Price hikes happened quickly after Trump slapped steep levies on trading partners, whether large or small. More than 35% of manufacturers and nearly 40% of service firms raised prices within a week of seeing tariff-related cost increases, according to the survey.
Trump announced in early April that he would impose “reciprocal” tariffs on more than 180 countries and territories, sending the stock market into a tailspin. But Trump soon rolled back or paused those levies for three months, unleashing the equity market to claw back most of its initial losses.
July deadline
Companies and investors alike are now looking to a July 9 deadline for the return of those suspended tariffs, coping in the meantime with continued confusion regarding to trade policy. The U.S. has already announced one trade deal with the United Kingdom, and Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender said this week that the Trump administration is “close to the finish line” on some other agreements.
The New York Fed’s survey is the latest in a salvo of data releases and anecdotal reports that have shown companies’ willingness to pass down cost increases despite pressure from Trump not to do so.
Nearly nine out of 10 of the 300 CEOs surveyed in May said they have raised prices or planned to soon, according to data released last week by Chief Executive Group and AlixPartners. About seven out of 10 chief executives surveyed in May said they plan to hike prices by at least 2.5%.
Corporate executives have been careful in how they speak about the impact of Trump’s policies on their business, especially when it comes to trade, to avoid getting caught in the president’s crosshairs. Last month, for example, Trump warned Walmart in a social media post that the retailer should “eat the tariffs” and that he would “be watching.”
Consequently, survey data and anonymous commentary offer insights into how American business leaders are discussing the tariffs behind closed doors.
“The administration’s tariffs alone have created supply chain disruptions rivaling that of Covid-19,” one respondent said in the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing survey published Monday.
Another respondent said “chaos does not bode well for anyone, especially when it impacts pricing.” While another pointed to the agreement between the U.S. and China to temporarily slash tariffs, they said the central question is what the landscape will look like in a few months.
‘Hugely distracting’
“We are doing extensive work to make contingency plans, which is hugely distracting from strategic work,” this respondent said. “It is also very hard to know what plans we should actually implement.”
Responses to the ISM service sector survey released Wednesday revealed a similar focus on the uncertainty stemming from controversial tariffs.
“Tariffs remain a challenge, as it is not clear what duties apply,” one respondent wrote. “The best plan is still to delay decisions to purchase where possible.”
A store closing sign is displayed as customers shop during the last day of a store closing sale at a JOANN Fabric and Crafts location in a shopping mall following the company’s bankruptcy in Torrance, California on May 27, 2025.
Patrick T. Fallon | Afp | Getty Images
The U.S. economy contracted over the past six weeks as hiring slowed and consumers and businesses worried about tariff-related price increases, according to a Federal Reserve report Wednesday.
In its periodic “Beige Book” summary of conditions, the central bank noted that “economic activity has declined slightly since the previous report” released April 23.
“All Districts reported elevated levels of economic and policy uncertainty, which have led to hesitancy and a cautious approach to business and household decisions,” the report added.
Hiring was “little changed” across most of the Fed’s 12 districts, with seven describing employment as “flat” amid widespread growth in applicants and lower turnover rates.
“All Districts described lower labor demand, citing declining hours worked and overtime, hiring pauses, and staff reduction plans. Some Districts reported layoffs in certain sectors, but these layoffs were not pervasive,” the report said.
On inflation, the report described prices as rising “at a moderate pace.”
“There were widespread reports of contacts expecting costs and prices to rise at a faster rate going forward. A few Districts described these expected cost increases as strong, significant, or substantial,” it said. “All District reports indicated that higher tariff rates were putting upward pressure on costs and prices.”
There were disparities, though, over expectations for how much prices would rise, with some businesses saying they might reduce profit margins or add “temporary fees or surcharges.”
“Contacts that plan to pass along tariff-related costs expect to do so within three months,” the report said.
The report covers a period of a shifting landscape for President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
In early May, Trump said he would relax so-called reciprocal tariffs against China, which responded in kind, helping to set off a rally on Wall Street amid hopes that the duties would not be as draconian as initially feared.
However, fears linger over the inflationary impact as well as whether hiring and the broader economy would slow because of slowdowns associated with the tariffs.
Tariffs were mentioned 122 times in Thursday’s report, compared to 107 times in April.
Regionally, Boston, New York and Philadelphia all reported declining economic activity. Richmond, Atlanta and Chicago were among the districts reporting better growth.
In New York specifically, the Fed found “heightened uncertainty” and input prices that “grew strongly with tariff-inducted cost increases. Richmond reported a slight increase in hiring despite Trump’s efforts to trim the federal government payroll.
This June may be the most harried for the Supreme Court’s justices in some time. On top of 30-odd rulings due by Independence Day, the court faces a steady stream of emergency pleas. Over 16 years, George W. Bush and Barack Obama filed a total of eight emergency applications in the Supreme Court (SCOTUS). In the past 20 weeks, as many of his executive orders have been blocked by lower courts, Donald Trump has filed 18.