Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reminds CBS anchor about wrong inflation prediction: Numbers are the best in 4 years

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent took a victory lap Sunday over recent inflation numbers that show a key benchmark hitting a four-year low, hailing it as vindication against the naysayers who predicted President Trump’s tariffs would cause prices to soar.Bessent gently dinged CBS’ “Face the Nation” anchor Margaret Brennan for asking him skeptical questions in March about studies by the Peterson Institute and other groups that predicted tariffs would spur inflation.

“Margaret, when we were here in March, you said there was going to be big inflation.There hasn’t been any inflation,” Bessent shot back during an exchange about whether retailers will have less inventory or jack up prices.

On Sunday, Brennan pressed Bessent on a recent Wall Street Journal piece by famed Republican strategist Karl Rove, who ticked through the economics and math of tariffs and warned that they could cost the GOP its majorities in Congress.“Actually, the inflation numbers are the best in four years.So why don’t we stop trying to say this could happen, and wait and see what does happen,” Bessent added about their exchange in March.

Last month, prices for consumers rose 2.3% over the year in April, down from 2.4% in March, marking the slowest year-over-year increase in over four years, according to the Labor Department’s consumer price index.Notably, April is the month when Trump announced, then paused, much of his planned “Liberation Day” tariffs.Many economists believe that the US still hasn’t yet felt the full impact of those tariffs.In March, during her interview with Bessent, Brennan pointed to studies warning that tariffs would put upward pressure on prices.

Bessent shrugged off one of those studies, from the Peterson Institute, as “alarmist.”During that interview, Bessent defended the Trump administration’s announcement of an affordability czar who would look at the “five or eight areas where this administration can make a big difference for worki...