artificial intelligence<\/a>, is sustainable and is only getting started, but the federal government shutdown is increasingly an impediment, Bessent said.<\/p>\n“There is pent-up demand, but then President (Donald) Trump has unleashed this boom with his policies,” Bessent said at a CNBC event held on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings in Washington.<\/p>\n
“The only thing slowing us down here is this government shutdown,” Bessent said.<\/p>\n
He said that incentives in the Republican tax law and Trump’s tariffs would keep the investment boom going and fuel continued growth.<\/p>\n
“I think we can be in a period like the late 1800s when railroads came in, like the 1990s when we got the internet and office tech boom,” Bessent said.<\/p>\n
US DEFICIT HAS SHRUNK, BESSENT SAYS<\/p>\n
Bessent also said that the U.S. deficit for the 2025 fiscal year ended September 30 was smaller than the $1.833 trillion deficit posted in the prior fiscal year. He did not provide a figure, but said that the deficit-to-GDP ratio could come down to the 3% range in coming years.<\/p>\n
The Treasury Department has not yet reported the annual deficit figure.<\/p>\n
The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that the U.S. fiscal 2025 deficit fell only slightly to $1.817 trillion despite a $118 billion jump in customs revenue from Trump’s tariffs.<\/p>\n
“The deficit-to-GDP, which is the important number, now has a five in front of it,” Bessent said at the CNBC event.<\/p>\n
Asked if he wanted to see a three at the start of the deficit-to-GDP ratio, Bessent said, “Yes, it’s still possible.”<\/p>\n
He added that the ratio would come down if the U.S. could “grow more, spend less, and constrain spending.”<\/p>\n
(Reporting by David Lawder and Andrea Shalal; Writing by Dan Burns and David Lawder; Editing by Andrea Ricci and Christopher Cushing)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By David Lawder and Andrea Shalal Washington (Reuters) -The two-week-old federal government shutdown may cost the U.S. economy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,128347,101,9292,4666,37867],"class_list":["post-229802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-cost-estimate","tag-economy","tag-government-shutdown","tag-scott-bessent","tag-treasury"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}