Scott Bessent Says America “Was Asleep,” Warns U.S. Became Too Dependent on China | AC1N

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:01]Good.

[00:00:03]Thank you very much. It's an honor to be here and I'd like to thank the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute for inviting inviting me to join you today. Of course, this year's forum carries special significance as we celebrate 250 years of the American story.

[00:00:20]But milestones of this magnitude demand more than ceremony.

[00:00:25]They ask something of us. They invite us to reflect not just on the creation of our country, but on its condition.

[00:00:33]And as we focus today on America's economic future, they compel us to confront and correct decisions that have diminished our sovereignty in recent decades.

[00:00:44]President Reagan himself understood that renewal begins with reflection.

[00:00:50]One thing that has made our republic great, he said, is that we don't hide from our mistakes. We learn from them.

[00:00:58]Then we go on and do things better than we did before. Better than we did before.

[00:01:04]That is the spirit in which I want to speak with you today.

[00:01:07]With candor and with confidence in our capacity to deliver another 250 years of American economic leadership.

[00:01:16]The truth is that for too long America had been asleep.

[00:01:21]We mistook comfort for strength. We substituted efficiency for resilience and consumption as a measure of prosperity.

[00:01:32]We told ourselves that so long as goods were cheaper overseas, it did not matter whether factories went dark in Michigan, Ohio, or Pennsylvania.

[00:01:43]We assumed that supply chains would always function smoothly and adversaries would always behave responsibly and the invisible hand would correct vulnerabilities that too few in public life had the courage to confront.

[00:01:59]And while we reassured ourselves with those assumptions, risk accumulated all around us.

[00:02:05]Somewhere along the way, we lost sight of a foundational principle that previous generations understood instinctively.

[00:02:14]Economic security is national security.

[00:02:18]For a nation that cannot manufacture, mine, ship, or refine its needs gradually, cedes its strength and sovereignty to others.

[00:02:28]That is a dangerous dependency for any country. It is an unacceptable one for the United States of America.

[00:02:36]Now, nations rarely cede their security in a single moment. More often, they drift into dependence through a series of politically expedient decisions.

[00:02:48]For our part, we made a series of mistakes, some bipartisan, others ideological, and many defended long after their cost became impossible to ignore.

[00:03:00]One was treating trade policy as though it existed apart from national strategy.

[00:03:07]We convinced ourselves that we could pursue commercial partnerships in one silo while managing security relationships in another, as if the world would honor these distinctions.

[00:03:19]But a nation that relies on a rival for critical inputs, finances the rise of countries that do not share our interest, and allows its productive base to erode while promising to defend the international order, will find, sooner [snorts] or later, that these two silos collapse into each other.

[00:03:41]As damaging as our willingness to extend strategic trust where depended, not [clears throat] earned.

[00:03:49]China's accession to the WTO and the granting of permanent normal trade relations were sold to the American people as steps that would level markets and moderate behavior.

[00:04:02]Instead, we left our workers to compete against state-led subsidies, excess capacity, and practices that distort trade and undermine reciprocity.

[00:04:14]We assumed the rules-based system would discipline these behaviors only to find that in too many sectors it accommodated them.

[00:04:23]And then in the name of efficiency, we began to celebrate just-in-time while neglecting just-in-case.

[00:04:32]The pandemic did not create our brittle supply chains so much as expose them.

[00:04:39]Suddenly, the world's most advanced economy found itself partially dependent on foreign suppliers for semiconductors, large-capacity batteries, critical minerals, and medicines that we no longer produce here at home.

[00:04:55]Regrettably, our recovery from the pandemic did not bring reform under the prior administration.

[00:05:03]Today, the United States still imports most of its rare earth minerals. They're essential to the technologies that will shape military and economic power in the 21st century.

[00:05:15]Only a small share of the active pharmaceutical ingredient ingredients that we use in the United States are made here.

[00:05:24]And American shipbuilding capacity, which once helped to secure victory in war and prosperity in peace, has shrunk to a fraction of global production. So, when I say America's been asleep, I do not mean that no one warned us. In fact, many did.

[00:05:41]Workers warned us when their plants shuttered and communities decayed.

[00:05:46]Military planners warned us when supply chains narrowed.

[00:05:50]Manufacturers warned us about subsidized competitors and dumped products.

[00:05:56]Public health officials warned us about pharmaceutical dependencies.

[00:06:01]The warning lights were glaring all around us.

[00:06:04]But our political class preferred the comfort of old formulas. Cheaper was always better, offshoring was inevitable, industrial policy was unfashionable, and strategic dependence was acceptable so long as the cost remained invisible.

[00:06:21]Beneath every one of those mistakes lay a more basic failure in our philosophy.

[00:06:27]In reducing economics to consumption, we forgot production.

[00:06:32]We measured abundance at the checkout counter rather than at the factory gate.

[00:06:37]We talked about GDP, but not enough about its composition.

[00:06:42]And we prized low-cost inputs without first asking whether a nation can remain sovereign when it loses command over the things that matter most.

[00:06:52]A country cannot outsource its industrial commons, ignore strategic concentration, and expect to remain secure. For manufacturing is more than output on a balance sheet, it is a reservoir of practical capability.

[00:07:10]Engineers and welders, tool and die makers, and logistic networks, plant managers and workers who know how to solve problems on the factory floor.

[00:07:20]When the ecosystem is strong, a country can adapt quickly.

[00:07:24]When it is hollowed out, adaptation becomes slower, more costly, and less certain.

[00:07:31]We saw this during COVID and the scramble for ventilators, masks, and other medical equipment.

[00:07:38]We saw it again as the war in Ukraine reminded the world that high-intensity conflict consumes weapons and munitions at a pace far beyond peacetime assumptions. Search capacity cannot be conjured overnight. It must be built before a crisis arrives.

[00:07:57]And a country that allows its industrial base to shrink in the quiet years should not be surprised when it struggles to replenish stocks in the dangerous ones.

[00:08:07]In a crisis, the nation with a broad and skilled industrial base has options.

[00:08:14]The nation that has hollowed out that base only has excuses. America should never again put itself in a position where its security depends on supply chains it does not control, factories it no longer maintains, or skilled trades it failed to preserve.

[00:08:33]That is why the president's agenda matters. Reasonable people can debate the calibration of any particular instrument, but the central strategic insight is undoubtedly sound. Trade policy, industrial capacity, and national security are inseparable.

[00:08:51]And to allow foreign dependencies to degrade any one of these domains is to allow them to define America's future.

[00:08:59]So, on this So, on his first day back in office, President Trump issued the America First Trade Policy Memorandum, a sweeping directive to Treasury, Commerce, Homeland Security, USTR, and other agencies to stop treating trade as a technocratic afterthought instead of an instrument of national strategy.

[00:09:23]Last April, the president declared a national emergency tied to the cumulative effects of foreign trade practices and announced reciprocal tariff actions framed explicitly around national and economic security. Again, people can debate design, sequencing, and scope. Healthy democracies should debate those questions, but no one should miss the larger point. Chronic non-reciprocal >> [clears throat] >> reciprocal agreements, industrial hollowing, and strategic import dependence are not questions of commerce alone. They are fissures in our country's foundation.

[00:10:05]A few weeks later, President Trump signed executive action on process critical minerals and derivative products under Section 232, expressly linking import dependence to risk for national security, defense readiness, and price stability, and economic resilience. Some have tried to weaponize critical minerals against us, but this administration is ensuring they will not succeed.

[00:10:34]On maritime strength, President Trump signed an executive order to restore America's maritime dominance, established a new office of maritime and industrial capacity at the National Security Council, and called for a maritime action plan to rebuild US shipbuilding capabilities.

[00:10:53]This is what it looks like to connect industrial capacity, logistics resilience, workforce development, and national security in one strategic frame.

[00:11:04]Finally, on pharmaceuticals, President Trump signed an executive order to fill the strategic active pharmaceutical ingredients reserve so that America is never again caught flat-footed when access to critical drug components is at risk.

[00:11:21]Last month, the White House also highlighted further action to impose tariffs on patented pharmaceutical products, while noting parallel Section 232 investigations involving personal protective equipment, medical consumable devices, and robotics. The strategic message is unmistakable. Supply chain resilience in medicine will no longer be an afterthought. This broader reoriented orientation is also visible in the administration's trade agenda for 2026 as we work to secure reciprocity, strengthen domestic production, and align America's external economic relationships with our core national interest.

[00:12:07]Taken together, these efforts reflect a broader principle that President Trump has articulated clearly.

[00:12:16]Economic security is national security.

[00:12:19]But let me be direct about what that doctrine does not mean.

[00:12:23]It does not mean retreating from the world. On the contrary, it means engaging with it on a stronger fairer, and more sustainable terms. It does not mean severing ties indiscriminately. It means distinguishing healthy interdependence from dangerous overdependence.

[00:12:41]It does not mean rejecting efficiency.

[00:12:44]It means refusing to worship efficiency when efficiency leaves our nation exposed. And it does not mean treating allies and adversaries alike. It means bringing our trading relationships and our security relationships back into alignment by building supply chains with trusted partners where appropriate, rebuilding capacity at home where necessary, and ensuring that the economic architecture supporting American power strengthens American security.

[00:13:15]Of course, America still holds enormous advantages, among them the world's deepest capital markets, extraordinary innovators, abundant energy potential, leading universities, and unmatched entrepreneurial culture, and workers who can outbuild and outcompete anyone, so long as the playing field is fair.

[00:13:38]All we needed was a government willing to declare that as decline is a choice, renewal can be one, too.

[00:13:46]So, yes, while America slept, our vulnerabilities grew.

[00:13:51]While America slept, too many leaders accepted failed supply chains as a price of modern life.

[00:13:58]While America slept, we let industrial policy erode and Main Street decay.

[00:14:04]We tolerated unfairness in the name of stability and conflated market access with strategic success.

[00:14:12]But, America has awakened.

[00:14:14]We are alert to the fact that a resilient economy is the foundation of a strong republic.

[00:14:21]That we can measure the health of our economy not merely by what it produces, but whom it lifts.

[00:14:27]That secure supply chains matter as much as stock indices. That productive capacity is power.

[00:14:36]That trade policy, industrial policy, and national security policy must all fit together, or they will each fail separately.

[00:14:46]So, let me begin Let me end where I began, with President Reagan's reminder to identify where we went wrong, and to recover our faith in what can go right. If we learn from our mistakes, if we rebuild what we neglected, if we reward production as well as consumption, if we prize resilience alongside prosperity, as President Trump has been doing, then this country will not simply patch over our vulnerabilities. It will enter a new season of national strength with a more robust Main Street and industrial base than ever before.

[00:15:26]Safer supply chains, more secure medicines, more reliable access to critical minerals, a revived maritime capacity, a financial system aligned with a national purpose, and trading partnerships that reinforce rather than undermine our security relationships.

[00:15:45]Indeed, the strength of this republic lies in not denying that the old consensus has failed. Instead, we must we must restore resilience where complacency took hold, rebuild capacity where dependence took root, and above all recover the confidence to believe a nation that knows how to build, invent, produce, and lead is never destined for decline.

[00:16:10]While America slept, our vulnerabilities grew, but under President Trump's leadership, we are alert to the risk we can no longer ignore and attuned to the responsibility we can no longer defer.

[00:16:22]Under President Trump, we have awoken to morning again in America and our best days, I believe, still lie ahead. Thank you all. I look forward to exploring these themes in further conversation with Larry.

[00:16:36]Thank you.

[00:16:37]>> [applause]