494: Scott Bessent—What's Up with Those Trump Accounts

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe

Episode 494: Scott Bessent—What's Up with Those Trump Accounts

Date: July 14, 2026

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Overview

In this episode, Mike Rowe sits down with Scott Bessent, Secretary of the Treasury, for a deep-dive into the new "Trump Accounts" initiative: a government-backed investment program aimed at giving every child born under President Trump’s term a financial head start in the American market. Using Bessent’s recent speech, "While America Slept", as a jumping-off point, the conversation ranges from financial literacy and market participation to broader national security, supply chain issues, workforce development, AI, and U.S.-China competition. The tone is frank, spirited, and at times bipartisan despite the political overtones.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: A Non-political, Yet Important, Conversation

• Mike clarifies early on that the podcast isn’t becoming a political show despite the rolling political guests, but the Trump Accounts warrant serious attention as they're a rare government initiative seeking widespread market participation—especially from those historically excluded.
  • “These Trump accounts… I’ve never seen a better attempt to get people involved in the market.” (03:00)

The Reagan Library Connection

• The episode records at the Reagan Library after Bessent’s speech “While America Slept”—a cautionary tale about America’s complacency and erosion of economic sovereignty.
• Memorable Bessent quote from his speech, as recalled by Mike:

  “We mistook comfort for strength. We treated efficiency as a substitute for resilience and consumption as a measure of our prosperity…” (06:12)

2. What Are Trump Accounts?

• Basics:

  • For any child born during President Trump’s term, $1,000 from the Treasury is deposited into a government-administered investment account.
  • Families, relatives, and employers can contribute (up to $5,000). Notables like Michael and Susan Dell have contributed billions.
  • The money is invested in low-cost index funds and can be used at age 18 for starting a business, education, home purchase, or rolled into retirement—the goal being long-term compounding.

• Goals:

  • Dramatically increase financial literacy and investment participation (currently ~38% of households hold no equities).
  • Narrow "financial service deserts" much like talking about food deserts.
  • Shift perceptions:

    “I think this is going to create a financial literacy boom… It won’t be, there’s a street in New York called Wall Street… People are going to be able to look at their phone and watch things go up and down.” (24:15)

• Potential Impact:

  • With compounding, even a small seed can grow to life-changing sums by retirement.

    "You put $1,000 in somebody’s account, and you just don’t touch it till you’re 59, 60 years old, it’s going to be worth about 300 grand, at least, historically speaking.” (04:40)

Notable Quote:

“The most important thing is to get the account open… and a lot of good things are going to happen. Accounts are going to go live July 4th… and then it’s going to start compounding.” – Scott Bessent (46:17)

3. Economic Certainty, Tax Policy, and National Prosperity (15:34)

• Bessent touts the “working families tax cut” (aka “one big beautiful bill”):

  • Tax cuts are made permanent.
  • Deductions for business investments (factories can be 100% tax-deductible for five years).
  • Four Trump-era signature tax policies: no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, reduced taxes on Social Security, deductibility for American-made car interest.

• Refunds were up 11% last year.

• On energy:

  • U.S. is now the top producer, but California is “energy poverty” thanks to policy, importing 40% of its energy.
  • Points out people are “voting with their feet” (leaving the state).

4. Manufacturing Renaissance & Workforce Development (18:25)

• Bessent emphasizes the need to reshore lost manufacturing—medicines, chips, steel, rare earths—tying economic security directly to national security.
• "Knowledge that goes with those jobs" is vital in times of conflict or disruption.
• The current boom is in construction (for future manufacturing), not just finished jobs.
• Emphasizes importance of good, upwardly mobile, skilled jobs—is optimistic about a resilient new generation.

  “…My speech was called While America Slept and like two things happened. We lost our sovereignty because we were in real national danger…” (18:59)

5. American Dream, Financial Literacy, and Systemic Optimism (23:23)

• Bessent’s definition:

  “No matter where you start… you want to be able to pursue your goals. You want to believe there’s a level playing field… The most important a government benefit for young people since the GI Bill.” (23:23)

• Emphasizes that the bottom 50% of households saw the largest net worth growth in Trump’s first term—believes it can repeat.

6. Addressing Market Anxiety, Housing & Institutional Investors (28:32)

• Acknowledges anxieties (news quality, market volatility, feeling “untethered” from macro events).
• On housing:
  • Structural issues with low mortgage rates, lack of mobility.
  • Pushing institutional investors out of housing (despite their seeming small numbers, they distort key markets).

  “Markets are made on the edges… In growth markets, they can be 20 or 30%.” (28:37)

7. Critical Materials & National Security (29:37)

• U.S. dependency (e.g., 95% of rare earth magnets from China; 90% of medicine precursors made in China).
• Administration “committed” to bringing supply chains home, ending predatory Chinese practices, and building a coalition among Western allies.
• On why resiliency matters:

  “We worshiped efficiency and gave up resiliency. We wanted consumption, but we didn’t focus on production.” (31:48)

8. Efficiency vs. Resilience (32:05)

• Bessent draws analogy between efficiency/risk and health (like invisible cholesterol buildup).
• Memorable quote (referencing Huxley):

  “Greatest threat to freedom was total anarchy, but the second greatest was total efficiency.” (32:05)

9. AI, Innovation, and U.S.-China Tech Race (33:00)

• Bessent is optimistic about AI—sees it empowering small business, driving productivity, creating new jobs (has not seen job loss so far).

• Warns of risks if China overtakes U.S. in AI; insists the U.S. has a crucial lead now (~80% of compute power soon).

  “There’s an innovation race between us and the Chinese that we just cannot lose… But we are ahead. We want to stay ahead, but we want to balance innovation with safety.” (39:14)

• AI’s communication problem: tech sectors often fail to explain importance/benefit to the public—a recurring challenge for many critical industries.

10. Bessent’s Personal Background & Philosophy (43:18)

• Bessent shares his origins in a small South Carolina fishing town and early lessons in money by working young ("bus and tables" at 9).
• His “reverse commute” in financial markets—skeptical of consensus, looking for overlooked truths.
• Sees America as self-correcting, ultimately optimistic about national renewal if the right lessons are learned.

11. Practical Financial Advice (48:09)

• Bessent’s core advice:

  • Gauge your personal risk tolerance—young people should take more risks.
  • Power of long-term compounding—“Market might go up, might go down, but over time, it goes up.”
  • Save for a rainy day; build resiliency as well as optimism.

  “Patience, patience. It’s a long game.” (48:31)
  “The main thing is it’s a long game. It’s a very, very long game.” (48:44)

• Reminds listeners:

  • “Trumpaccounts.gov, the site went live yesterday. We are number one in the app Store now. So everyone’s downloading it.” (49:49)

12. End Notes: Historical and Optimistic Framing

• "While America Slept" references Churchill’s warning before WWII; Bessent hopes the U.S. is now reawakened.

  “America has awakened—and not woke—but awakened and full speed ahead. And when we put our mind to something, nobody does it like we do.” (51:13)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On sovereignty and complacency:

  “We mistook comfort for strength. We treated efficiency as a substitute for resilience…” – Bessent (06:12, via Mike Rowe)

• On the Trump Account’s impact:

  “I think this is going to create a new class of shareholders and it’s going to bring people into the system.” – Bessent (25:00)

• On efficiency and hidden risk:

  “You could eat a lot of red meat… but you’re also building up cholesterol. And it’s a silent killer. If you’re not paying attention to resiliency, in a way, it’s a silent killer.” – Bessent (32:24)

• On AI optimism and leadership:

  “We are the AI superpower. We are ahead of China. I think we’re about a year ahead.” – Bessent (37:19)

• On patience and financial wisdom:

  “The main thing is it’s a long game. It’s a very, very long game. Patience, patience.” – Bessent (48:44)

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Key Timestamps

• [03:00] – Importance and potential of Trump Accounts
• [06:12] – “While America Slept” speech excerpt
• [15:34] – Policy tools and economic certainty
• [18:59] – Manufacturing, workforce, and national security
• [23:23] – American Dream and Trump Accounts’ role
• [24:15] – How the Trump Account works, target groups
• [28:37] – Housing & institutional investors
• [31:48] – Supply chain vulnerabilities, China dependency
• [32:05] – Efficiency vs. resilience (Huxley reference)
• [33:00] – AI, innovation, and U.S.-China competition
• [46:17] – How to open an account and get started
• [48:31] – Bessent’s personal finance advice
• [51:13] – “America has awakened”—closing optimism

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Takeaways

• The Trump Accounts mark a watershed government experiment in building generational wealth and financial literacy—“the most important government benefit for young people since the GI Bill.”
• American economic security is national security; resilience in manufacturing, energy, and technology is crucial.
• Participation in markets is a pathway to opportunity and empowerment for generations historically left aside.
• The U.S. is currently a leader in innovation and AI but cannot afford complacency—balancing progress and safety is key.
• Financial wisdom boils down to patience, risk assessment, and taking advantage of compounding—especially for the young.

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For more information, visit: trumpaccounts.gov
To open an account, see the app store—site and app are now live.

Transcript

[Podcast Host]

Hey, guys. This is the way I heard it. This episode is called what's up with those Trump Accounts? Full Disclosure. That was a headline I saw recently somewhere, and I was curious, so I read the article. And then fortuitously, not too long thereafter, I found myself at the Ronald Reagan Economic Forum in the Ronald Reagan Library listening to a bunch of big shots mouth off about various policy issues. Yeah, and guess who I met, Chuck?

[Co-host Chuck]

Secretary Besant.

[Podcast Host]

That's a pretty good guess. I should have known, as the erstwhile producer of this podcast, you would have access to that kind of information. Scott Besant delivered a remarkable speech while I was there. And I just happened to have a small crew with me and we set up camp right there in the library. And I wound up hanging out for a very long day and left with four or five really, I think, super interesting interviews with some very consequential CEOs and people in the aerospace industry and various experts on this and that. But it was Scott Besant who really got my attention with a speech he gave called While America Slept. You would have loved it.

[Co-host Chuck]

While America Slept.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. Yeah. And where were you, Chuck? While America was sleeping? And I was recording this podcast.

[Co-host Chuck]

I was slumming it at an all inclusive in Cancun, probably swimming down a river or zip lining. I don't know. I was doing something fun.

[Podcast Host]

Well, I hope so. This probably can't compete with that. But I don't know. Listen to the conversation and tell me what you think. Because this guy, first of all, he's everywhere.

[Co-host Chuck]

Yeah, that's true.

[Podcast Host]

He is everywhere. And we laugh about this early on because I was like, scott, you were on TV last night before I nodded off, and you're right there in the morning in the Oval Office talking about this, that and the other. Oh, and let me also say, before we get into this, fear not, friends. The way I heard it is not morphing into some polemic or some political podcast. Yes, it's true. J.D. vance was last week's guest, and yes, his mere presence triggered.

[Co-host Chuck]

Caused a stir.

[Podcast Host]

Yes, yes. I just wanna say, for anybody who actually listened to our conversation, it was Mike roorks 101.

[Co-host Chuck]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

It was not a political conversation. This conversation with Secretary Bessen is probably more political than the one I had with the vp. But in some ways, I think it's even more important because these Trump accounts, you know, they're not perfect. Like any other thing, there's, you know, there are rules that you need to be aware of. But I've never seen a better Attempt to get people involved in the market.

[Co-host Chuck]

Right.

[Podcast Host]

Who otherwise never would be. It's pretty great.

[Co-host Chuck]

I mean, I think it's great. It's great on several levels. And the whole idea of compound interest is starting early, and how much earlier can you start than when you're born? You know what I mean? It's like you can really help your kids have a great advantage from the get. Even if you don't do anything, even if you just do a little bit, that's going to. Over the course of a lifetime, that's going to double and double and double and double.

[Podcast Host]

I kind of think of it like an allowance in a way. Like, my allowance was very paltry when I was a kid, but it was my first experience with, you know, sort of managing money and thinking about, okay, well, I made a couple bucks this week. Maybe I can get this or that or maybe I should save some. Well, this isn't so much about money management as it is about financial literacy in general and investing in particular.

[Co-host Chuck]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

So you're right to get a kid at the earliest possible age, aware of the facts that they have money that belongs to them, that's growing in this thing called a market in indexed funds. And once you've got a little bit of skin in the game, then you become interested in ways that I think are really important. Because, look, man, we've got, like, half the country or more is not invested in the markets at all. Why would they care? This is such a great way, I think. And by the way, you're talking about $1,000 from the government. If you have a kid in the next three years, you can contribute to that account. Talk to your financial advisor, if you have one, about how this compares to 529s and IRAs and Roth IRAs, right there. All kinds of options. And there are rules. But look, you put $1,000 in somebody's account, and you just don't touch it till you're 59, 60 years old, it's going to be worth about 300 grand, at least, historically speaking.

[Co-host Chuck]

Wow.

[Podcast Host]

So you're giving people a real opportunity to participate in the market. And now, of course, you've got guys like Michael Dell who just put in billions of dollars. Yeah. So this is a whole other story, and we don't get into it in our conversation, but, you know, our friend Jeff Childers, who was on the podcast earlier this year, wrote a really interesting column about how billionaires, like, for real, like the most serious players in the country, are contributing massive amounts into these funds after they're established and like the practical impact of that. Chuck, has really been amazing to watch because you're. You're sort of disenfranchising NGOs. It's opened up this whole conversation about should people have the right to handle their own charitable receipts or not.

[Co-host Chuck]

Right?

[Podcast Host]

So these Trump accounts, never mind what you think about the guy in the Oval Office, it's really worth looking at and understanding. And I just thought, who better than the Secretary of the treasury to explain them to me? Which he does. I also want to give one other shout out to what I heard when I was there. I was a little late, it was a breakfast thing, and he had just started his speech. But this is what I heard when I walked in from the Secretary. The truth is that for too long, America has been asleep. We mistook comfort for strength. We treated efficiency as a substitute for resilience and consumption as a measure of our prosperity. We told ourselves that so long as goods were cheaper overseas, it didn't matter whether factories went dark in Michigan, Ohio or Pennsylvania. We assumed that supply chains would always function smoothly, adversaries would always behave responsibly, and the invisible hand would somehow correct vulnerabilities that too few in public life had the courage to confront. And while we reassured ourselves with those assumptions, risk accumulated all around us. Somewhere along the way, we lost sight of a foundational principle that previous generations understood instinctively that economic security is national security. For a nation that cannot manufacture, mine, ship or refine its needs, gradually cedes its strength and its sovereignty to others. That is a dangerous dependency for any country, and it is unacceptable for the United States. Wow. I found myself in such violent agreement with that sentiment. Anyway, he agreed to sit down and chat. You're gonna hear some weird creaking in the background during this conversation. It's cause it was windy and we were out on the patio and, you know, our lights and rigging and stuff was kind of moving around. But it's a worthwhile conversation and it delves into a whole lot more than just the Trump accounts, which again, are absolutely worth your time and worth understanding the Secretary of the treasury right after this.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Dumb.

[Podcast Host]

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[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Glad to do it.

[Podcast Host]

Are you really?

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Because I've been to these things before and everybody is pulling you in every direction at the same time. They all want to tell you a story and they all want to thank you and congratulate you for this, that or the other.

[Podcast Host]

It's got to be exhausting.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

I tell you, it's exhilarating being here at the Reagan library. I was 18 when I met Ronald Reagan. Just where'd you meet him? Next to the Yale campus. Only five of us went to see him speak when he was candidate Reagan. I shook his hand and he was the first president presidential candidate I ever voted for. So it reminds me of my youth. And just the photos of him and the first lady are so hopeful.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Gosh, it's amazing. Have you been through the ranch before?

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

I assume you've been up there once. Once.

[Podcast Host]

It is so stunning.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

I mean it's so shockingly modest. People don't believe it. You know, that little single tiny bed and the, it's all extraordinary.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Well, it's an incredible American story. Incredible American story. I'm sure the lot of your viewers know, but his nickname was Dutch because he used to get a Dutch boy haircut with the bowl because they did it at home. And then he was in the White House and one of the most transformative presidents in history.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Well, I've been a few presidential libraries. This wins partly because of that, but just mostly because you can just, just walking through it, you can still get a sense of the guy and a sense of the, the footprint he left.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Well, I mean it was so consequential when you, when you look like well there's bringing down the Iron Curtain and just bringing America back.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, you were on the tv when I fell asleep last night, you were on it.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

When I woke up this morning, you were here when I showed up.

[Podcast Host]

What is happening?

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

I mean, are you on a kind of tour of sorts?

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

No. Well, I'm out here for this keynote speech here at the library, which was called While America Slept. We printed our way, our sovereignty, and our industrial capacity for about 25 years. We're bringing that back. I did do the weekly White House press conference yesterday, which was fun. Fun. That there are a bunch of animals there in the press conference.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Okay, okay. Hey, he said it. No, but it was really going to be one of my first questions. When you're standing there and the press is all clearly so eager, maybe even desperate to ask a question, are you actually calling on them? Are you. Does the loudest question get the. Get your attention?

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

No, no, no, no. It is. Well, first of all, I walked out and three weeks ago, went back to my home state in South Carolina, University of South Carolina, gave me an honorary PhD. So I walked out and I said, if you want to get called on, you got to call me Dr. Besson.

[Podcast Host]

And it worked.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

And it worked. So, you know, whoever yelled Dr. Besson the loudest, and I just went, that is symmetrically through the crowd.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Well, let's just jump into what's most important to you right now. I know you've been talking about the Trump accounts. You've said a lot of things that I think are really relevant to my audience, which is. Which is kind of eclectic, but there

[Podcast Host]

are a lot of people. They're concerned about AI.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

They're concerned about the market. They're concerned about not being in the market. They're just concerned.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

They're concerned, yeah.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

So how do we mitigate that concern?

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Well, again, someone said to me, are you surprised the market's going up on bad news? And I said, well, it's. That the news is bad, that the quality of the news that people get is bad, that whether. Whether it's newspapers or the television, that people now present opinion as news, and I have perfect. The asymmetric information. What's going on with the Iran conflict? We're kicking their butts. But if you. If you were to read. If you were to listen to, like, some of these crazed Democrats, if you were to read the front page of the New York Times, you wouldn't get that. Right. So I'm not surprised by what's happening, but I can understand how it causes anxiety in the American people. And look, I was in the investment business for 35, 40 years to extent That I had success. It was looking on the other side of things, thinking about the medium, the long term, that the saying this too shall pass, that this conflict will end, that gasoline prices will go down. But I don't know if you remember last year, it was eggs, eggs, eggs. And you don't see anywhere now. Egg Prices are down 90%, right? They're down 90%. The president posted on his truth account the other day, there are 12 big grocery items that are all down. And look, beef prices are up and an unfortunate disease in the Mexican cattle supply coupled with some problems in the beef cycle. So beef prices are going to be tough to get down, but chicken's down a lot, a lot of other goods are down. And we're working every day on that.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

What would you tell then the average American who's willing to give the President the benefit of the doubt, but who is genuinely concerned and who really feels we have no control whether it's eggs or whether it's beef or whether it's policy? People feel untethered, I think from that. What, what's the administration doing and what can, as Secretary of Treasury, you do or say to just bring a little perspective.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

What we can do is we can give certainty. So we passed the working families tax cut, also known as the one big beautiful bill last year. So the tax cuts are permanent. It's not student body left, student body right anymore. And that had something for everyone. You know, on the business side, whether you're a big business or a small business, you can fully deduct any capital expenditures. Factories for the next five years can be 100% deducted from taxes. And then on the other side, the President's four signature policies. No tax and tips. No tax and overtime. They reduced taxes on Social Security. 85% of our seniors didn't pay taxes on Social Security. Deductibility of interest for American made cars. Tax refunds were the biggest they've ever been. They were up 11% last year. So, you know, I think that there is great certainty there. We have great certainty on energy policy that it is choppy now because what's happening in the Gulf and in the Middle east, but we never produce so much oil in the US we're the number one energy producer in the world. Now for you all here in California, California has made the decision to be the energy poverty, which means high prices. And California is the only state that depends on foreign imports. I think California imports 40% of its energy.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

What's the matter with us?

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

I don't know because I can Tell you, there's plenty of energy off the ground and offshore.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

We grow more timber in this state, I think, than anywhere else in the country, and yet we import more.

[Podcast Host]

I don't know. I don't know why.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

If I'm confused and I live here, I don't even know how to explain to somebody in Pennsylvania. What can you do about that?

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Well, what can we do? We can put in good national policies. In California, a Californian leaves the state, one person leaves every two minutes. So they're voting with their feet. Feet, which is too bad. I mean, look at this. Doesn't get any better. But eventually you have to believe the democratic system will take over, that there will be some scream for normalcy. I remember seeing Jerry Brown at an event and it was his second time in office and it was when Democrats got the trifecta, both houses and the governorship. And he said, it's like running China. It's one party rule. We're going to have one party rule for a long time. And this is what one party rule does.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

I'm not a political animal and I'm certainly not a journalist, but there is an issue that is most central for me. It's, it's workforce. It's reinvigorating the trades. For the first time since I've been running my foundation, I'm, I'm talking to the administration. The Department of War is keenly interested in making a more persuasive case for hundreds of thousands of great jobs in the defense industrial base. I would love to know your thoughts on how you think about that in terms of its importance to the country, to a balanced workforce and all that entails.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

I just gave my speech here today and you can go to the Treasury X account and either watch it or read it. And that's. My speech was called While America Slept and like two things happened. We lost our sovereignty because we were in real national danger because of the things we no longer produced. You know, a country that doesn't produce its medicines, its semiconductors, its steel, critical minerals, which we've seen the Chinese cut us up on and are essential for military production. So you become very vulnerable on one side, but on the other side, you lose those good jobs and you lose like there is knowledge that goes with those jobs, that people who work in a factory, who work with their hands, who understand manufacturing process. If we were to get into another conflict, they can immediately move and they work on that. So, you know, we are seeing a manufacturing renaissance. Everyone says to me, oh, but we haven't seen like that many manufacturing jobs happen. Well, that just says they don't know much about how industry works. What we are seeing now is a boom in construction jobs and those construction jobs will turn into manufacturing jobs. And we are seeing whether it's the pharmaceutical industry bringing jobs back. We are reshoring our auto supply. Arizona next door here is going to be the semiconductor capital of America and one day the semiconductor capital of the world.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Are you worried that creating jobs and creating opportunities is different than having a workforce that's either enthused or skilled or willing or excited to avail themselves to it? That to me is where the disconnect is. And trying to push those two things together seems to be the job.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

I think what happened was people thought the system was rigged against them. I have given two graduation speeches in the past month. One was University of South Carolina, one was a high school graduation where my son used to go and I told these kids, I said look, you are resilient because the college kids were children during the gsc. The high school kids were born then, then they saw Covid. So they've got a lot of resiliency. And I really think it's up to us to let people know that the system does work work for them. If you do the right thing, if you they want to work hard, if you want to make good decisions, then there is still the American dream. So and you got to make sure that they are good paying jobs on the other side where people can move up.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

What is the American dream exactly?

[Podcast Host]

At last count, there were 115,000 orphans in this country and 380,000 churches. That means if just one person in one out of every three churches were to adopt a kid, there would be no more orphans in America. None. That's why Mike and Tracy Taylor adopted their kids. That's why Josh Connolly adopted his daughter. Obviously you don't have to be a member of a church to adopt a child, but it shows you just how solvable our problems are if an army of normal folks steps up with a genuine bottom up solution. That's why I hope you'll check out a terrific podcast called an army of Normal Folks. It's hosted by my friend Bill Courtney. And nobody is better at inspiring all kinds of bottom up solutions than Bill. Every episode features true stories of normal folks making a real difference in their communities on every single topic imaginable. Join the army today by subscribing to the army of Normal Folks podcast on Apple, Spotify, Iheart or just go to normalfolks.org that's normalfolks.org I think the American

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

dream is no matter where you start. Look, I'm a small town kid from the, I think there were 500 people in my town when I was growing up. What's that in South Carolina? Little River, South Carolina, and a fishing, fishing village right on the North Carolina, South Carolina border. And you get to be Treasury Secretary. But the other American dream is you want to be able to pursue your goals. You want to believe that there's a level playing field. You want to be able to, if you want to start a family, if you want to own a home and you want to be able to have good medical care. Like to see what is waiting at the end of your career. We passed these Trump accounts, which I think are the most important a government benefit for young people since the GI Bill.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Explain how it works and who they're for primarily.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Well, for any child under age 18. Trumpaccounts.gov you can go on. Any child who was born during President Trump's term who has the account will receive $1,000 from the treasury as a seed investment. Families can put in money, relatives, anyone can add. We are seeing some of our great philanthropists who want to give back. Susan and Michael dell have donated $6.25 billion to the charter America works out to about anyone who registers for an account. It's $250. 38% of American households own no equities, so they have no exposure to our great stock market, the American innovation, our capital markets, our great management teams. And people talk about there being food deserts where you can't get nutritious food. I think they're financial service deserts where people haven't been able to get access to accounts like this and frankly, they don't know about them. So I think this is going to create like this financial literacy boom because it will be a real time experiment. It won't be. There's a street in New York, it's called Wall Street, There's a stock exchange. People are going to be able to look on their phone every day and watch things go up and down. At treasury, we're very committed to financial literacy. We've got five or six modules for different age groups. And I think that it is going to create a new class of shareholders and it's going to bring people into the system. So when you were talking about the way people feel, I think the people feel outside the system. So the more people we can bring into the system.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Well, that was my thought when I, when I was watching you do the press conference yesterday. The ticker is in the lower right hand corner and I'm looking at the stock market at 50,600. I feel pretty great about that. I, I've been involved in it for a while, but I'm thinking of the 30 or 40% of Americans who must look at that and either not quite understand what it means or resent the fact that they've got nothing to do with it or say about it. And the thing is it's right in their face every day. Right. And so I think if I understood you right, what you're saying is kid gets a thousand bucks at birth and that starts to grow. I assume it's vested in it's vested

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

low cost index funds. And when they turn 18, they can, it's, it's compounded for 18 years. They can either take it out to start a business, the down payment on a home for education, or they can roll it into a retirement account tax free. And then it can keep compounding then and again they can keep adding to it. And one message that I would want to get to people, and I think it's a great point that if you feel, if you, if you look at the stock market doing well and think you're not participating, if you are working anywhere in the economy, the fact that the stock market is doing well is good for you. Because when companies are doing well and a huge amount of the companies aren't listening to the stock exchange, they're small business, but it means the economy is doing well, as the economy does well, people will do better. In President Trump's first term, the bottom 50% of households did better than the top 10% in terms of the increase in net worth. Hourly workers did better than supervisory workers. And I think we can do that again.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

I was talking to the CEO over at Home Depot, Ted Decker, who said that he reckons the amount, the percentage of the GDP represented by housing right now is something like $50 trillion. And again, vis a vis the American dream, if you're renting, if you're not really in that, how can you feel as if you're participating above and beyond the Trump account?

[Podcast Host]

I mean, how, how broadly are you

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

trying to pull people into this through the lens of a financially literate citizen?

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Problem we have now is a lot of people have very low mortgage rates. They don't want to move. There's probably a group, I'm not going to speak for you, but my age, who they would like to downsize, but the mortgages are so low they don't want to do it, but this will eventually work its way through the system. One thing that we've done, there's a bipartisan bill up on the Hill to keep institutional investors out of housing. And everyone says, well, they're only 3% of the market. Markets are made on the edges. And in many of the growth markets, you know, maybe Atlanta, some markets in Texas, in the Sun Belt, they can be 20 or 30% of the market. So we're trying to push institutional investors out, we're trying to work on schemes for first time home buyers and we're working with the builders to see what we can do.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

You mentioned metals, rare earths, along with energy. And I just think of the things that we rely upon, even timber, to the earlier point. What, what can we do to make ourselves more independent with all of that critical, critical metals, rare earths, all of that. If you could just talk a little bit about the relationship with China, why we need them and is there an impact on the average citizen?

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Oh, there's a huge impact on the average citizen. I mean, anyone who has an iPhone, they're rare earth magnets in that if you go in for an mri, there's nothing that uses more rare earth magnets than an MRI. And guess what, 95% of them come from China. And we weren't paying attention. Largest rare earth magnets company used to BE in the U.S. the Chinese bought it, took it to China and now they export back to us. So what we are doing the Trump administration is committed to, we have a list of supply chain vulnerabilities where things are a single point of failure. And we are working to bring those back. We are securing. So rare earths, there are two parts to it. There's the mining. And rare earths actually aren't that rare or earth really. We have them in the US There are certain ones that are only in certain locations around the world. And we are the accumulating mining assets. But we have to be able to process it here. So we're standing up facilities to process here. We're going to set up controls to avoid the Chinese predatory pricing. And we're seeing which of our Western allies, whether, whether it's Japan, Canada, Europe, Australia, South Korea, want to join us in this and kind of taking back our sovereignty. We are working pre. The real thing that might freak you out, freak me out, is 90% of the precursor chemicals for our medicines are made in China. Anyone who's had a child is given them amoxicillin that we could be cut off from amoxicillin so we made a decision, we turned a blind eye because it was cheaper to do it offshore. We worshiped efficiency and gave up resiliency. We wanted consumption, but we didn't focus on production.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Huxley said the greatest threat to freedom was total anarchy, but the second greatest was total efficiency.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

I like that. I may use that. So thank you.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Well, you're ripping off Huxley, not me.

[Podcast Host]

But I mean, how do you think

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

about efficiency versus effectiveness?

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Well, there's a trade off and a lot of it's invisible because with efficiency there's a bottom line. And you can add your bottom line, but your accumulating a risk over here. It's kind of like if you think about good health, you could eat a lot of red meat. It's good, you're getting a lot of proteins, you're strong, but you're also building up cholesterol. And it's a silent killer. And I think about if you're not paying attention to efficiency and resiliency, in a way, it's a silent killer.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Can I ask you about AI course and data centers? Yep. I mean, neither one of those things existed when Huxley wrote that. And I think Brave New World. But it feels to me like 75% of the country is uneasy about AI and nervous about data centers. Larry Fink at BlackRock says that we got a $10 trillion infrastructure that has to be built out in the next seven or eight years. It's not really negotiable, but I think

[Podcast Host]

a lot of people look at that

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

and they feel like we're doing it in the name of efficiency because we have to somehow compete with China in order to get the AI first, which means the data centers, which we don't quite understand either. So we're like in some kind of crazy race and we don't know where the finish line is. We just know it's really expensive and unnerving.

[Podcast Host]

So make everybody feel better about that.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

I'm mercifully not an economist. I'm an economic historian. So the history of new technologies, people were always worried. There were people who wouldn't get into cars when cars first came out. You had somebody at night who walked in front with a lantern and did that, and people who owned a horse and buggy maybe weren't happy. 20% of the jobs that people had now didn't exist in 2000. So we've got to keep innovating. The people who've done it, who are building it out have done a terrible job explaining it. And when you use AI when you go on Google, Google's AI, when you do spell check, that's AI. It is just growing. It's growing and it's going to be able to do more for you. The optimistic view of AI I am very optimistic for small business on AI. It's going to let the, it's going to let small business compete with big business. You could start a business that used to take 10 people to start. You can start with one or, one or two people. And we've seen no job loss from AI yet. I don't think we have to. I talk to corporations, we see one large credit card company, maybe we'll be able to figure it out. When I say this, they move people from collections to the travel department and you know, AI is going to make people more, more efficient. It's a tool and it is to be used. Just like Google didn't exist in 2000.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Sure.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Now it's a verb. Dumb.

[Podcast Host]

Every builder I know, and I know a few, they all tell me the same thing. They're not only struggling to hire skilled tradespeople, they are drowning in a sea of disconnected information. That's why Diggs is growing like a weed. Diggs is an AI powered platform built specifically for home builders that connects everything from takeoffs and selections to homeowner handoffs and warranties. So instead of losing information between the various phases of a build, Diggs keeps everything connected in one visual workflow, plans, documents, selections, product info, endless conversations, approvals, all of it. With Diggs, it stays tied together so builders can instantly find answers that are buried inside of hundreds of different project documents. Like what flooring option did the homeowner ultimately approve? Or what paint color did we use in the primary bathroom? Or what's the spec sheet for this particular appliance? Builders using digs report saving 40 to 50 hours per project and catching costly mistakes before construction even starts. It's less rework, less confusion, and a much smoother build experience for the homeowners. If you're a builder, visit diggs.com mike get 40% off your first three months. That's diggs.com mike for 40% off. And if you're getting a home built, for crying out loud, make sure your builder knows about Diggs. It'll make life a lot better for both of you. That's 40% off for the first three [e-mail] Mike can you

[Co-host Chuck]

dig it?

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

When I was in college, used to have to go like you'd go, you'd look up when something had been written in the newspaper, in this book. Then you'd go, you get a microfiche, you'd have to print it out. It was like an all day project as opposed to what's happening now. So like that's a good kind of efficiency and you can use that kind of efficiency to make you more resilient. And what I will say is we are the AI superpower. We are ahead of China. I think we're about a year ahead. I think we will continue moving ahead. We probably used to have 50 or 60% of the compute power in the world. We'll probably soon be at 80. And that is an incredible national advantage. And I think that the best thing that the AI labs can do is do a much better job of educating people on how to use AI, how it can work for them, either whether it's at home or in their business. I was on a call the other day, something for my son, and the person on the call said, do you mind if my AI agent is on the zoom with us? And okay, this is different.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Yeah.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

And we went through this some things and then I got a six page report three days later. Beautifully written and it covered everything we'd done. And this is someone who just started a business two years ago.

[Podcast Host]

It really is a tool.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

And you know, I think of it sometimes like a, like a firearm. It can be used for extraordinary virtue and extraordinary mischief. And I think, I think we just don't have our heads around yet precisely how to wield this thing and who ought to have it.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Well, so, so that's, that's what we're doing. I'm running a lot of the AI effort for the administration. And what we are, what we are trying to calibrate is there's an innovation race between us and the Chinese that we just cannot lose. If the Chinese were ahead of us in this, I can tell you the mischief and the havoc that they would wreak and that the leverage they would have over us would just be that. I don't even want to think about it. It's unconscionable. But we are ahead. We want to stay ahead, but we want to balance innovation with safety. So we are trying to find the right equilibrium for the best combination of innovation and safety. And we're going to get there. And these AI labs, they are cooperating and they want to be part of the solution.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Why is it that so many truly consequential things, and by that I mean things that we really all depend on, could be fossil fuels, could be AI? It's A long list. But they all seem to be beset with communication problems. At some point. The very industries most responsible for providing these things that we rely on so profoundly have failed to remind us

[Podcast Host]

why we ought to be grateful, maybe, or

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

why we ought to at least understand their actual impact on us. It's a colossal failure. Yeah.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Look, I don't know what it would have been like to be around Thomas Edison. Like, I. I don't know.

[Podcast Host]

He was cranky, from what I'm told.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Yeah, very cranky and ruthless businessman like General Electric. Monopolistic.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Litigious.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Litigious. Very litigious. Just. Just ask Mr. Tesla.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Yeah.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

And nothing's different. I think it's just more widely known, widely transmitted. So just just because you're good at inventing something doesn't mean you're good at selling it. Just about every American at some point has touched a Microsoft product. I don't think Bill Gates was especially great salesman. He was a great inventor.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

What's more important in this modern age, Innovation or imitation over the long run.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Innovation over the long run. It's got to be that. You can't steal your way. You can have knockoff, you can have. But Coca Cola is still number one. Sure.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

But the miracle of getting it bottled and into every refrigerator in the exact same way and the exact same quantity with the exact same taste, that's kind of a miracle, too. The guy that was just sitting there has a company called Apex, and they're. They're mass producing satellites for the first time. And I didn't make this point to him because I think he's looking at. What he's doing is very innovative, and it is. But it seems like the root of his success is going to hinge upon his ability to imitate himself perfectly over and over and over.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Well, mass, mass production, you make more of something, price goes down, right? So. So. And the usage goes up. So that's what we're seeing. I got into the job market in 1984 and you might remember Lotus Notes and these spreadsheets, and everybody was, what's going to happen to bookkeepers? Demand for bookkeepers went through the roof because it was so cheap to hire a bookkeeper.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Right.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

And they were much more efficient. So like imitation. Sometimes imitation can set off very good competition, and competition brings down price.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Since you mentioned your resume and your past, how did you wind up here? And I don't mean that through an American dream lens, I mean your own philosophy, your own politics, your own ideology, you seem to have arced in a

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

way Give you a little history. Our family early days in South Carolina and we've been prosperous for 200, 250 years. Same spot. And my dad had some financial troubles. I got my first job when I was nine. So.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Nine years old.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Nine years old. Bus and tables.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Yeah.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

So from biggest house in town to bus and tables. And I can tell you. And also putting out umbrellas on the beach in Myrtle Beach. I can tell you when you get a W2 when you're 9 years old. But you learn about money. Like I had spending money so I could save my paycheck and spend my tips. So that's why I like no tax and tips. I wanted to do public service. I think we have a great country. But I was always probably like a lot of your viewers, I was very leery of the conventional wisdom. And to the extent that I had success in the markets for 30 or 40 years, it was not going along with the crowd.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

The reverse commute.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

The reverse commute. Like why that? What, what does everybody believe that could be wrong? Or why can you be ahead of the curve? A lot of times I was just too early. I in my private business, I think I had a critical mineral stock that I own from 09, 2015 and went bankrupt. Right. My worldview has been that there is a path where the system worked for everybody. And the great thing about our democracy is it's self regulating. If we go too far one way or too far the other thus far, Ben Franklin said, you got a republic if you can keep it. And the way we've kept it is by moving back and forth. We're here at the Reagan library. In the 70s were the great malaise, huge inflation, national spirit. Jimmy Carter was a very nice man. You might remember that speech he gave sitting in front of the fire and he had his sweater on. We're all going to have to have a little less and suck it in. And then Ronald Reagan came and just kind of reignited the national spirit. And I think we have a great national spirit, a great platform, and we got to make sure again that we keep everybody believing in it.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

What would Scott Besson had done with a thousand bucks Trump account when he was nine years old, setting up umbrellas in Myrtle Beach.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

I used to have the. I'm dating myself. I used to have a passbook savings, the Christmas Club. They used to put my money into that. I would have just put more money into the Trump account.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

So I understand it. If I have a kid, I can open an account. Feds put in $1,000.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Well, if they're born during President Trump's term. Otherwise, you can open the account, you can contribute up to $5,000. Your business, businesses, a lot of employers are going to put in the couple hundred up to $1,000 for their employees, children, about 20 states are going to contribute. So the most important thing is to get the account open. Get it open, get it, get it open. And a lot of good things are going to happen. Accounts are going to go live. July 4th, which is the 250th anniversary, Monday, July 6th, they're going to go live, and then it's going to start compounding.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

And if the index is any indication, that compounding is going to basically double every seven, eight years. Exactly right? So you contribute as you go. You go from 0 to 14 years old, your money's doubled twice. At least.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

At least.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

And now you look at that little ticker in the lower right hand corner and you feel like you're a piece of it, part of it.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

And you want to learn about it. You want to be much more financially literate. Because financial literacy, I always tell people there are two sides to it. There's a great program, my hometown in Charleston, South Carolina, College of Charleston, a lot of kids, they're first generation students are, they're on financial aid, and all the credit card companies are waiting out on the freshman lawn. You want a credit card, Here you go. And they've never had a credit card before, and boom, they max out and they're not in college anymore. So there are two sides. There's making it, and then there's managing debt responsibly. And I can tell you now, there's so many of these like program, buy now, pay later, that the people can really get sideways very, very quickly.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

If I were to ask you for one bit of advice, and I know, I hate cookie cutter advice, but as a man in your position right now, if you could just flick your fingers and get America to understand, really understand one core financial truth about their own personal economy, what would it be?

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Gauge your personal risk level. So a young person should take more financial risk than somebody our age. That and the, the worst thing you can do is to get out over your skis. And then the power of long term compounding. Like, people used to come up to me and said, well, how do I make money fast? I said, rob a bank because the market might go up, it might go down, might stay the same, but over time, it goes up. Warren Buffett said, never bet against America. And what is your risk tolerance? I always tell people that you don't want to panic at the bottom, you don't want to be euphoric at the top. The main thing is it's a long game. It's a very, very long game. Patience, patience. And the predictability and resiliency, too. A lot of people can't afford to put money away for a rainy day fund, but it's good to have that cushion. It's good to have the cushion. And I think what's going to be very interesting about these Trump accounts is like they're going to be sitting there and compounding and these children are going to know that they have it and

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

the place to go.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Trumpaccounts.gov the site went live yesterday. We are number one in the app Store now. So everyone's downloading it.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Amazing.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Yep.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

All right. You got a treasury to run and the wind is going to blow us off the mountain.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Exactly.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

I really appreciate your time. And the speech was called While We

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Slept, While America Slept. So it's a takeoff. Winston Churchill wrote a book While England slept and what Nazi Germany was doing during that time. And he said England was ill prepared for what the Nazis were doing. And my point is that if we let this go on much longer, we were ill prepared for what non allies were doing.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Terribly political of you.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Mr. Well, I'm trying to be diplomatic. There would have been a point of no return. There would have been a point of no return where it's just too big a project to bring back. And I tell you that there's a group of us in the administration and we are just all out pedal to the metal. And we believe if we leave in January 2029 and we haven't accomplished a lot of the goals that I talked about in my speech today, we will have failed.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Well, the most optimistic thing about your speech is the title because it implies that we're no longer asleep.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Nope. It's that we slept at this. We slept at this. And America has awakened and not woke. What? Not woke, not woke, but awakened, awakened, awakened and full speed ahead. And when we put our mind to something, nobody does it like we do.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

I sure appreciate your time.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Glad to do it.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Pleasure.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

Good to see you.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Thanks. When you leave a review, only five stars will do. Not just one or just two or just three. We were hoping

[Podcast Host]

four more,

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

As in

[Podcast Host]

a one more than a four.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Oh, please.

[Scott Besson (Secretary of the Treasury)]

One more than four.

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

Just a quick review with five stars,

[Podcast Host]

too,

[Interviewer/Guest Host]

for all you five stars will do.