Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday defended the Trump administration’s recent intervention in the bond market, pushing back on an eyebrow-raising critique from his investing mentor, billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller.
“Stan’s a great investor, but what I would point out is that, again, the U.S. bond market has been the best performing market since the president came in,” Bessent told CNBC’s Sara Eisen on the sidelines of the Group of 20 finance ministers meeting in Asheville, North Carolina.
When Eisen noted that bond yields have been rising around the world, Bessent said, “Not in the U.S. They’re flat since the president came in.” Treasury yields have moved slightly higher since Trump took office, amid a confluence of factors including pressure from tariffs and persistent inflation.
Druckenmiller in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Aug. 24 pointedly criticized as a “mistake” the Treasury’s recent decision to more than double the size of its government debt repurchases.
The announcement came as yields have risen to their highest levels in years. The administration’s move quickly sent bond yields sharply lower, but they rebounded a day later.
“You can’t buy your way out of a solvency conversation with liquidity tools. You can only postpone the conversation and raise the eventual price,” Druckenmiller argued in the op-ed, which he later said was written with the help of AI tools.
Bessent told CNBC on Monday that he has spoken with Druckenmiller since the piece was published, and that their conversation went “fine.”
But the combative Cabinet secretary also threw a thinly veiled jab back at his friend and mentor.
“Stan’s a great investor. He changes his mind a lot, and he doesn’t like losing money,” Bessent said. “I think he lost money the day he sent in the editorial.”
He went on, “My job is to make sure that the market is looking at fundamentals and that the market does not dictate policy.”
“Hedge fund managers like to speed things up,” Bessent added, before stressing that the U.S. “is the best performing bond market. So, I’m not sure where the weakness is.”
Bessent told CNBC earlier in August that the accelerated buyback of government debt could exceed the announced $4 billion.
