Treasury secretary on holiday prices, agriculture industry and more

WASHINGTON (CBS, KYMA) - Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent spoke with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday about holiday prices.

Back in April of this year, President Donald Trump shared his prediction of what to expect during the holiday shopping season.

"Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know. And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally," President Trump said.

When asked if the president's prediction back in April was correct, Secretary Bessent said, "It's actually been a very strong holiday season...we've seen across all the income cohorts thus far. And so, there's nothing to say that there are two dolls instead of 30 dolls."

Bessent also added, "The economy has been better than we thought. We've had the 4% GDP growth in a couple of quarters. We're going to finish the year, despite the Schumer shutdown, with 3% real GDP growth."

During the interview, Brennan and Bessent talked about the agriculture industry.

According to Brennan, grocery prices are up nearly 3% compared to last September, and said the president put out an order Saturday saying "they're going to investigate corporate price gouging for high beef prices" after Trump seemingly acknowledged that at least beef prices are a challenge.

This prompted Brennan to ask the secretary if suing the food companies the same thing the Biden Administration tried and failed to do, as well as ask how this is going to be different, to which Bessent said:

"Nothing the Biden administration did worked...Because this isn't the same thing. If they had done this, if they'd done it properly, we'd be in a different spot. And like, beef is one component. Thanksgiving Turkey was down 16%."

Also according to Brennan, Agricultural Secretary Brooke Rollins announced that Trump "is going to announce a bridge payment for farmers this week to give them short term relief" while Bessent is working on finalizing the trade packages.

This led Brennan to ask Bessent why farmers would need a bridge payment from the Agriculture Department, and the secretary said:

"Because these prices haven't come in, because the Chinese actually used our soybean farmers as pawns in the trade negotiations. And we are going to create this bridge because, again, agriculture is all about the future. You've got to start financing for planning next year when things will be very good."

Later in the interview, Brennan and Bessent talked about the IRS Criminal Investigations Unit discovering a massive fraud in Minnesota, as well as a state welfare program that has been under federal investigation since 2022.

According to Brennan, Trump told Bessent to look into Somali immigrants, leading her to ask Bessent what exactly is he investigating, and the secretary said:

"To be clear, the initial fraud that was discovered by, for which I'm the Acting Commissioner...[the] IRS Criminal Investigations Unit. This was not an endogenous thing that the state of Minnesota decided. We had to go in and clean up the mess for them, and this is part of the continued cleanup. A lot of money has been transferred from the individuals who committed this fraud, including those who donated to the governor, donated to Representative Omar and donated to AG Ellison, but they've been transferred to something called [Mortgage Backed Securities]...These are money...the bureau services, and they are wire transfer organizations that are outside the regulated banking system, and that money has gone overseas, and we are tracking that both to the Middle East and Somalia to see what the uses of that have been."

To watch more of Brennan's interview with Bessent, click here.