https://www.wsj.com/opinion/scott-bessent-donald-trumps-economic-engineer-8efc4aaa?mod=hp_opin_pos_2
Scott Bessent: Donald Trump’s Economic Engineer
The Treasury secretary looks ahead to the Beijing summit and discusses AI, energy, taxes, bank regulation and more.
By Mark Halperin, The Wall Street Journal, April 24, 2026
…
Mr. Bessent sketches a picture that is less rupture [with China] than recalibration. Trade continues. American companies still operate in China. The U.S. still sells agriculture, energy, financial services and software. But in three areas—critical minerals, medicines, and semiconductors—America becomes meaningfully independent.
“We’re pretty far along,” he says of rare-earth minerals. “I would say it’s a step function every nine months and probably completely resolved in four years.”
That timeline underscores the central contradiction in Mr. Bessent’s China policy. He insists the coming summit with Xi Jinping is about “stability,” avoiding escalation, keeping the relationship predictable. Yet nearly every concrete move he describes is designed to reduce dependence on the Chinese, thus minimizing Beijing’s leverage…
The tension between those two ideas—China as existential competitor and China as manageable counterpart—runs through the entire approach. …
Mr. Bessent’s prescription [regarding AI] is a mix of targeted regulation—controlling advanced chip exports, certifying systems in a manner akin to aircraft safety—and a lighter touch that avoids stifling innovation. The through line is familiar: stay ahead of China, harness the upside, contain the downside…
The U.S., he argues, ceded too much domestic manufacturing capacity over decades, often through a combination of regulatory burden, inertia and strategic neglect. Rebuilding that capacity—whether in chips, advanced textiles or other sectors—isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about resilience…
The cumulative effect of these policies—taxes, energy, deregulation—is meant to feed into a single outcome: sustained, broad-based growth…[end quote]
The article says, “The central components of the Treasury secretary’s agenda include restoring growth after the havoc of war, rebalancing global trade, driving down inflation without choking expansion, lifting real wages for the bottom half of earners, and reasserting American dominance in the industries that will determine the next generation of prosperity—chips, artificial intelligence, energy.”
If true, that’s an enormous amount of power. But it’s not clear to me how much direct impact the Treasury Secretary can have on these. Business formation, prices and wages are set by the free market. The Federal Reserve controls monetary stimulus and the banks. Congress controls fiscal stimulus and writes the tax laws.
It’s nice to say that the U.S. wants to forge ahead with AI. But the Chinese are using AI broadly in practical engineering applications (like factory floors and robotics) while the U.S. seems to be focusing AI on non-productive applications like entertainment.
Meanwhile, our trade imbalance with China isn’t improving. We sell them agriculture, energy, financial services and software but they are shifting toward renewable energy and can readily produce their own financial services and software.
At least Bessent seems to have his brain in gear.
Wendy