Scott Bessent: ‘I can’t guarantee’ America will avoid a recession

By Elisabeth Buchwald, CNN

New York (CNN) — Is a recession brewing in the US? The answer to that question will vary depending on whom you ask in the Trump administration — and when.

Wall Street plunged last week after President Donald Trump said he was not ruling out a recession and that Americans should expect “a period of transition” across the economy. Since then, various administration officials have sought to reassure investors that there’s no need to panic.

“Donald Trump is bringing growth to America. I would never bet on recession. No chance,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” over the weekend. Meanwhile, on the same program, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said “there are no guarantees” there won’t be a recession.

He doubled down on his response Tuesday morning, telling Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, “I can’t guarantee anything… But what I can guarantee you is that there is no reason we need to have a recession.”

That’s a contrast in the tone Bessent has previously struck when responding to questions about the liklihood of a recession.

“There’s going to be a detox period,” Bessent said earlier this month in a CNBC interview. Then, in another CNBC interview last week, he denied that a “detox period” in any way implies a recession.

“Not at all,” Bessent said, “it will depend on how quickly the baton gets handed off. Our goal is to have a smooth transition.”

Rising recession odds

Forecasts of a pending recession have picked up substantially in recent weeks, amid a heated back-and-forth over Trump’s tariff threats and the slew of new tariffs that have gone into effect.

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who served under the Clinton administration, said in a CNN interview Friday that he believes there’s about a 50% chance of a recession occurring, with the risk “rising every day.”

Even as markets got off to a better start this week compared to last week’s brutal drop, Summers said his forecast hasn’t changed. “The huge sense of policy uncertainty, the chilled spending, is still with us,” he said in a separate interview with CNN on Tuesday morning.

In a recent note, JPMorgan economists penciled in a 40% chance the US economy enters a recession, a 10 percentage point increase from earlier this year. The revision resulted from ramped-up tariffs that the bank’s economists view as capable of putting a substantial drag on business activity to the point that it “throws the US economy and global economy into a recession.”

Recent surveys indicated that businesses are delaying investments and seeing revenue decline as customers put off purchases, in part due to tariffs.

Additionally, consumer spending, the backbone of the US economy that accounts for more than two-thirds of GDP, appears to be getting less and less sturdy.

The latest read on consumer spending shows that it dropped by way more than economists expected. That comes as retail sales came in much weaker than expected last month, following a decline in January.

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