Several Democratic lawmakers pressed Bessent on the state of the economy, inflation and the rising cost of living — tying it to the Iran war and the run-up in global oil prices. Bessent blamed inflation on the previous Biden administration, and said Americans are better off under Trump.
He pointed to fresh data from the U.S. Census Bureau showing that the percentage of Americans in poverty last year dipped 0.5 percentage point to the lowest rate on record, 10.2%, with 34.5 million Americans in poverty. Median household income increased 2.6% last year to a record $87,460.
Bessent was also asked if Trump's proposal to pay each American $5,000 if the Republican Party maintains congressional majorities in the November elections was serious. He said he would work with House Speaker Mike Johnson to make those payments happen if congressional approval proved necessary.
Bessent said the U.S. dollar's strength reflects the Trump administration's credibility.
"A strong dollar is not a price on a screen; it is a set of behaviors, and what we have seen in this administration, where we are creating regulatory certainty, tax certainty, trade certainty and energy certainty that is bringing in trillions of dollars into the U.S.," Bessent said.
Democrats questioned Bessent on concerns over increasingly powerful AI models after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called on AI companies to slow the rate of advancement to ensure their safety — sentiments echoed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk, who runs xAI.
Asked about the administration's position on this, Bessent said the Treasury has "been working on safety nonstop since the release of Mythos" earlier this year, working with banks to share patches for cybersecurity software vulnerabilities exposed by the Anthropic model.
He said the administration forced Anthropic to withdraw a model for safety checks, and that AI labs should be held accountable for their creations, but it was important to stay ahead of China in the AI development race.
"I can tell you what we shouldn't do on safety is to give these labs a liability exemption, which is what they are asking for," Bessent said. "The best way to guarantee safety is that the creators are liable for what they build and generate, and put out into the economy and to the American people and to the world populace."
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