U.S. Treasury Scott Bessent Visits Asheville To Preview G20 Finance Minister Meeting At End Of August
Friday, United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sat down with The Blue Ridge Times in an exclusive interview to preview the G20 Finance and Central Bank Deputies Meeting. This meeting at the end of August will put Asheville on the world stage, showcasing the process made in recovering from Hurricane Helene.
Here’s the interview between Secretary Bessent and Blue Ridge Times, Editor and Chief, Tim Wigginton.
Wigginton: Welcome Secretary Bessent to Asheville. What brings you to town?
Bessent: I have historic roots in the area. I grew up coming to Saluda and Flat Rock, North Carolina. I have a home in Jackson County. But as a preview, we’re going to be holding the G20 Summit for Finance Ministers here at the Grove Park Inn.
Wigginton: Great. What is the G20 Summit for Finance Ministers?
Bessent: The G20 is a group of countries with a forum for them to come together at different levels. There is a rotating head, and the U.S. has the chair this year. President Trump will be holding the G20 in Doral. Secretary Rubio will be having the Diplomatic Foreign Policy Summit in Atlanta. And I chose to have the Finance Minister’s Summit here is Asheville as the comeback city after the terrible events in September 2024 to get the world to focus on the beauty that I know of in the Blue Ridge Mountains and the comeback and resilience of the people here.
Wigginton: Building off that, what are your hopes for the meeting. What do you hope to showcase about Western North Carolina? Is this kind of a way to show off Asheville to the world?
Bessent: Yes. I grew up coming to Blue Ridge Mountains my entire life. The G7 last year was up in the Canadian Rockies. So it’s, you know, we’ll see some mountains and raise you to the Blue Ridge. And I hope that the delegates they’re going to be from countries all around the world and coup more that we specifically invited. So about 25 countries and then many of the most important multilateral organizations, the World Bank, the IMF, and organizations like the Financial Stability Board.
Wigginton: What is impact of those organizations on the lives of everyday North Carolinians? How do they impact the lives of average Americans?
Bessent: So, it’s coordination. It’d say two things. It’s our ability to set an agenda and to form personal relationships. The U.S. is the world leader economically, military, soft power and this is a chance to reinforce that. It’s also very good to establish relationships with many of the finance and central bank ministers. That’s the other important thing that is different with the G20 finance. Each delegation will be represented by their finance minister and their central bank head. So, Fed Chair Warsh and I will lead our delegation. These personal relationships are important in the event of an emergency, we know who to call, and can call on them. If there is a problem brewing underneath the surface, we are able to interdict that before it metastasis into something bigger.
Bessent: In terms of the specifics this summit, the U.S. is trying to push a growth agenda on the rest of the world, both in energy, technology, and our manufacturing base. And we want the rest of the world deregulate, have energy security, and come and grow with us because the rest of world growing is good for the United States.
Wigginton: We talked a little bit about the U.S. growing, how that fit with the President’s signature legislation, the Working Families Tax Cut, what is the impact of that legislation on America’s growth?
Bessent: Yes, so I think the Working Families Tax Cut, also known as the One Big Beautiful bill. It was big, it’s beautiful, and its got a lot in in. And we can highlight the things in it. I was in Arizona for two days, and I visited a Frito-Lay factory, meeting with workers and executives. It’s a highlight of my job to go out and see how great policy impacts people. On the factory side, they had immediate expensing for equipment, for factory structure, and agriculture structures. And then on the other side, for working Americans, is President Trump’s four signature tax cuts, promises made, promises kept, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, deductibility on Social Security, which means 85% of our seniors aren’t paying tax on Social Security, and deductibility on interest on auto loans if you buy an American-car. So you’ve got more jobs on the manufacturing side drive by this corporate CApEx boom, and then Americans are keeping more of it.
Bessent continued: I also oversee the IRS as the Treasury Secretary, and 44% of Americans claim one of President Trum’s four signature tax policies. And I would add that every single Democrat voted against it.
Wigginton: In North Carolina the Republican General Assembly and Republican State Treasurer Brad Briner are working to promote financial literacy. What are you doing at the Treasury to improve financial literacy to empower Americans?
Bessent: I want to congratulate the Treasure because this has been a philanthropic interest of my family for more than a decade. I think financial literacy for young people and even for other people, we’ve done a very poor job of this in the U.S. And at Treasury, we just had financial literacy month in May, and we push it every day.
Bessent continued: We got the Trump Accounts, which are also part of the Working Families Tax Cut. It’s accounts for every American under age 18. I’d encourage all families to sign up from it at, trumpaccounts.gov. For children who are born during President Trump’s term, the Treasury will seed those accounts with $1,000. It’s going to go into a low-cost index fund that will compound until they’re 18. When they’re 18, they can either take it or to purchase a car, down payment on a house, help with education, or to start a business, or they can roll it into an IRA style retirement account. And it could be a supplement to Social Security, and it could be hundreds of thousands of dollars by then. Families who aren’t getting the $1,000 too, because many employers are going to contribute, parents can contribute, and relatives in many state are going to continue. I’m not sure what North Carolina is going to do.
Bessent said: We have got some great national philanthropists, Michael and Susan Dell, are putting in $6.25 billion for children who live in zip codes that are not the 25% of earnings. So there’s a lot of money that’s going to be put into these account. We’ve had 7 million sign ups so far, and we want to get all 70 million children who are eligible signed up. And the other thing that I would say the Democrats tried to say that this is another benefit for the rich. Of the 7 million signups we’ve had so far, more than 90% of families make less than $200,000.
Wigginton: A big part of the America First agenda is helping families thrive. This week your department put out some new family leavy policies. Can you walk me through them?
Bessent: So, I believe that President Trump’s first term, second term, is the most pro-family presidency in history. The Working Families Tax Cut, we increased the child deduction, made it permanent at $2,200, from $2,000. It would have dropped back if the Democrats got their way. This week we gave guidance on paid family leave, and employers want to do the right thing. They want to offer benefits, and we want to help them do it. So, it is now deductible against expenses for an employer to offer this benefit to their employees, tax-free to the employees. And if employers want to buy insurance to pay for the cost of coverage, then they can do that also.
Wigginton: As we think about the AI race with China, what is the Treasury doing to make sure Americans win and that AI doesn’t negatively impact Americans?
Bessent: I would say three things. One is exactly as you touch on, we got to win the race with China. So I help manage the U.S.-China relationship and deal with them every month, every week, and every day. And I tell you that are fierce competitors. Their state and military economic governmental system puts them at disadvantages on one side and an advantage on the other. But what I can tell you is that U.S. is winning the AI race. We’ve got to stay ahead, because if they got ahead, the would use AI for purposes to contain us militarily, contain economically.
Bessent continued: Number two, the misinformation about AI is a real problem. And look, it is natural to be concerned about a new technology, but I am not an economist. I am economic historian. And I can tell you that every technological revolution in history has ended up with more jobs. That twenty or twenty-five percent of the jobs that we have today did not exist in 200. When I was in college, we didn’t have cell phone. So imagine all the jobs in the mobile phone network. The idea that could make $500,000 a year if were a great content provider on social media. It didn’t exist.
Bessent said: And what we are seeing in the data, this would be number three, is completely contrary to the myth that AI is coming for your job. It’s the opposite. Companies that are using AI are doing more hiring. And on the other side, for small business, we seeing near record among of small business formations. Because for people who know how to us AI, you can start a small business now with one, two, three when it would have taken ten to 15 in previous days. So I think this is going to be boom for Main Street.
Wigginton: When we talk about reshoring to make sure we have AI development here, are we worried about a lack of computer space, power and chips? How are we bringing more stuff back to America?
Bessent: One of the things that President Trump has prioritized is reshoring our semiconductor industry, which is mostly based in Taiwan. We have seen what a choke point looks like with the Strait of Hormuz with energy. And the crazy thing is the U.S. doesn’t get any of our energy from the Strait, but 20% of the world’s energy is from there. What I can tell you is that it is a huge risk as someone who lived through the Arab oil embargo of the 70s as a child, this a the biggest risk that I have seen since then. That 90% of the high-ed precision chips are made in Taiwan. We need to reshore it.
Bessent continued: I was just out in Arizona. Arizona is going to be a huge beneficiary. Tens of thousands, if not hundred of thousand of jobs in the chip ecosystem. So our goal is to reshore hopefully 30%, at least 30% of advanced chip production in the U.S. by the end of President Trump’s term, and at least half by 2030. And the TSMC, the large Taiwanese semiconductor firm, is making substantial investments. But we’ve also seen Intel. We had a national champion on the ropes. President Trump took a stake via the government. And not only has he made substantial money, tens of billions of dollars for the American people; the company has had a big turnaround. So I’m very optimistic. But we are running as fast as we can to alleviate this choke point.
