‘Very good chance’ U.S. budget deficit has peaked under Trump

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday there’s a “very good chance” that the U.S. budget deficit under President Donald Trump has likely peaked.

“We are going to be laser focused,” Bessent told CNBC’s Sara Eisen in an exclusive interview a day after his department’s extraordinary debt buyback announcement.

The monthly U.S. budget deficit topped $432 billion in July, its highest level in more than half of a decade, the Treasury Department said last week. That monthly report showed the gap for the fiscal year to date climbed to almost $1.8 trillion, above where it was at the same point a year earlier.

The Treasury Department announced this week that the U.S. government debt pile to fund those deficits hit a new record above $40 trillion. The total has more than doubled over the last decade, exacerbating concerns about the country’s financial health.

Bessent said himself, Trump and Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, are among federal government leaders working on fiscal consolidation measures. Several hundreds of billions of dollars could be saved through these efforts, Bessent said.

The White House has marketed its goals for broad and steep tariffs on trading partners as a driver of revenue that can help shrink the national debt. But those levies have run into repeated legal roadblocks, most notably with the Supreme Court’s decision to strike many of them down.

Yet Bessent said he expected this year’s tariff revenue to come in at around the same level as 2025’s after levies were re-implemented despite the challenges. Those revenues should not have to be refunded to companies this time, he said.

“There’s nothing magic about the 40-trillion number,” Bessent said. “We can grow our way out of that.”