The president’s treasury boss lost his cool when asked about tariff refund plans in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling that struck down this administration’s signature economic policy.
“I do want to start with the big question. Will you refund the roughly $134 billion in revenue taken by these emergency tariffs?” host Dana Bash asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on State of the Union Sunday.
Bessent, 63, immediately got defensive, responding: “Well, Dana, that’s not the big question. The—let’s just level set here—what the Supreme Court did was a very narrow reading of the president’s authority under the tariffs."
Bessent added, “We have other tariff authorities which have been functioning; Section 232 tariffs, Section 301 tariffs.”
The treasury secretary complained: “And Dana, when you say it’s a big question, that’s bad framing because the Supreme Court didn’t even address that. The Supreme Court remanded it down to a lower court.”
As Bessent noted that it could be “weeks or months” for the lower courts to make a judgment, Bash argued: “Sure. They didn’t address refunds. That is clearly going to be up to you, which is why—”
“No, no, no, no, Dana, it is not up to me,” Bessent interrupted, with the CNN host clarifying: “Not you, not you.”
“It is not up to the administration. It is up to the lower court. Let’s just be clear on that,” Bessent repeated.
Asked whether the Justice Department would uphold its prior promise to issue refunds if Trump’s tariffs were ruled unlawful, the treasury secretary again pleaded the Fifth.
“Again, I’m not going to get out ahead of the court. We will follow the court’s direction,” Bessent side-stepped, reiterating that the decision could be “weeks or months” away.
Later in the conversation, Bash raised Bessent’s prior claims that “any tariff refund would be corporate welfare and would likely not get passed on to the American consumers.”
Asked whether small business owners who’d been hit by the tariffs would see any of the $134 billion—if it’s refunded at all—Bessent refused to answer.
“I again, I’m not going to get out ahead of the court. We don’t know what arrangements were made. We don’t know what the foreign suppliers—whether they discounted the—what’s happened,” he said, stumbling over his words.
“So let’s just focus on the news on Friday, and then I’ll come back after the lower court rules.”
Bash seemed perplexed by Bessent’s opacity, hitting back: “Yeah, it’s just as the treasury secretary, it’s hard to believe that you don’t have an opinion or know where these revenues of over $100 billion are going to go, or have an opinion on where they should go.”
