by Sharon Rondeau
(Nov. 12, 2025) — In an interview with Brian Kilmeade of “Fox & Friends” Wednesday morning, Treasury Department Secretary and Acting IRS Commissioner Scott Bessent said “some substantial announcements” will be made “over the next couple of days” aimed at lowering prices on certain items and boosting Americans’ earning power.
The conversation opened with Kilmeade asking about the economic effects of the current 42-day government shutdown which may end soon.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Kilmeade reported, found that the economic loss resulting from the longest shutdown in history which curtailed air travel, ceased funding certain programs such as SNAP, and sharply reduced personnel in many agencies, could be as high as $14 billion.
The shutdown, Bessent responded, evidenced the Democrats’ desire to “stop President Trump” using extreme means, having fallen short of denying him a second term in the White House in previous efforts.
“They’ve taken the mask off,” he said. “…They were willing to cost the government tens of billions of dollars. The economy was in a great place, 3.8% growth last quarter, tracking very well this time; I think we’re going to accelerate into 2026, but they caused a hiccup here.”
Kilmeade asked if Trump plans to lower tariffs on countries such as Brazil which produce coffee, which has seen exponential price increases since 2021.
“World coffee prices reached a multi-year high in 2024 – increasing 38.8 percent on the previous year’s average – mostly driven by inclement weather affecting key producing countries,” the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported on March 14, 2025.
According to Texas-based KVUE in late October, coffee prices have increased more than 20% in 2025.
Crushing inflation was inherited from the Biden administration, Bessent told Kilmeade. “Affordability has two components: so there’s the price level, and then there’s income level. And what happened under Biden was the cumulative inflation, stated inflation CPI, was 20, 23%, but what happened to working Americans? Their basket of goods and services — food, insurance, auto payments — was up in the 30s, so they felt a real gigantic differential there. And what we are going to do is by bringing back high-paying manufacturing jobs, President Trump is going to do what he did in the first term, and that is for hourly workers and working Americans to have real wage increases.”
“Inflation,” he said, is now “under control,” and with increasing wages, he said, “the American people are going to start feeling better.”
“This has been a touch period,” he asserted.
A new Boeing manufacturing facility will soon open in his hometown of Charleston, SC, Bessent continued, creating 1,000 new jobs. Another opportunity arose for several hundred furloughed Caterpillar employees in Sumter, he said, which may burgeon to 3,000 permanent positions.
“We got the tax bill passed on July 4,” he said, referring to the “Big, Beautiful Bill” Trump spearheaded, “which gives huge incentive to come to the U.S., build your factory, expense it immediately and create American jobs.”
As IRS Commissioner, he said, he could speak to “substantial refunds for working families” which he said constitutes “real wage growth.”
Beginning “in the middle of the year,” “Trump accounts” will provide $1,000 for every child born beginning on January 1, 2026 to be invested in the U.S. stock market.
On H-1B visas, Bessent responded to a clip of an interview Laura Ingraham conducted with Trump earlier in the week by affirming the president wants to bring in “overseas workers who have the skills” to train Americans in fields such as semi-conductors and shipbuilding and, after an established period of time, “return home.”
“That’s a home run,” he said.