Barbara Boyd argued that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Vice President JD Vance are pursuing an economic strategy centered on expanding American production, rebuilding manufacturing, and growing the economy faster than the national debt.
Boyd opened her remarks by pointing to concerns surrounding the nation’s debt and financial markets.
“The $40 trillion U.S. debt and what’s being called a bond market explosion are the hottest news in the financial press. It looks to me like creating a financial panic is the next phase of the plan to destroy President Trump ahead of the midterms. But Scott Bessent has a secret plan to crush the speculators. Here’s Bessent talking about the debt on Thursday.”
Bessent addressed the size of the debt while pointing to the administration’s efforts on the federal deficit.
“The $40 trillion is a big number, and remember, we did not get here in a day; we were left with a mess. The Biden administration had the highest deficit-to-GDP in history when we weren’t at war or weren’t in a recession. For 2025, we brought it down by more than a percent.”
Boyd then highlighted comments from Vance about the administration’s strategy.
“And here’s J.D. Vance Thursday talking about what he called Scott Bessent’s discrete plan to deal with it.”
Vance said the objective is to produce economic growth that exceeds the growth of the debt.
“The other thing is that Scott Bessent, the amazing Treasury Secretary, he has had a very discrete plan, of course supported by the President of the United States, to get the United States to a point where our economy is growing faster than our debt, and if you look, we are on track. So even though the debt is too high, even though we inherited this debt bomb from the Biden administration, we actually do have a plan to get the economy growing faster than the debt, and that’s the most important thing.”
Boyd described the approach as drawing heavily from Alexander Hamilton’s economic ideas, with an emphasis on directing credit toward productive activity rather than relying solely on spending reductions or tax increases.
“Now, Scott Bessent’s secret plan to deal with the debt and inflation is as old as Alexander Hamilton.”
She argued that credit used to expand production, infrastructure and technological development can increase the amount of goods available in the economy.
“Issuing credit for productive purposes through a sovereign wealth fund, special government funds, or the banking system is non-inflationary and even deflationary.”
Bessent similarly emphasized domestic productive capacity while discussing the country’s economic security.
“That our strength, in other words, is derived from what we can build. For the nation that cannot produce what it needs is not truly secure, and the nation that reduces its economics to consumption is not truly prosperous.”
He identified several industries he considers central to future American power.
“Instead, as Hamilton put it, it is essential to enlarge the sphere of our domestic commerce because economic security begins at home. It begins with the capacity to build, invent, finance, and scale the industries that will define the next century. Among them: semiconductors, AI, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, shipbuilding, critical minerals, and pharmaceuticals, to name only a few.”
Bessent added that those industries have implications beyond ordinary commercial activity.
“More than sectors of the economy, these are sources of our national power, and America must lead in each of them.”
Boyd argued that the strategy provides an alternative to dealing with debt primarily through austerity or higher taxation.
“The models being used by Wall Street and London don’t have a box for how does an economy grow out of its own debt. They only have boxes for spending less or taxing more. So when Bessent proposes a third option, growing the productive base until the debt shrinks next to it, their spreadsheet just doesn’t compute it.”
She connected that approach to Hamilton’s policies following the Revolutionary War, describing an economic system in which government credit supported production, infrastructure and new industries.
Boyd then turned to Vance’s recent appearance in his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, where the vice president criticized decades of free-trade policies.
“They said it was irrational, sentimental, old-fashioned to want to preserve the things that make the United States of America special. What we really needed, they said, was to compete and have complete market integration with every nation in the third world, places where you could pay wages at pennies on the dollar, but didn’t have to give your workers healthcare or good benefits in the process.”
Vance said Americans who supported tariffs or tighter immigration policies were dismissed by supporters of that economic model.
“And anytime somebody dared to put an obstacle in front of that set of ideas, anytime they said, you know what, we need to put tariffs or tough immigration policies to stop that, those people were called backwards. They were called wrong.”
Vance also connected the decline of manufacturing employment with social problems experienced by communities such as Middletown.
“Economists have measured the ways in which the opioid crisis exploded in the very locations where jobs were shipped overseas.”
He continued:
“The open borders demanded by those same people brought some innocent people. Of course, it did. But we also know that it brought a lot of cartels. It brought the fentanyl trade, and it left us with millions of orphan children being raised by aggrieved grandparents.”
Vance then delivered a sharp assessment of those he blamed for the economic policies.
“Now the blood of these men and women, these so-called deaths of despair, I’m sure you’ve heard that phrase, but it’s almost too abstract for me, because the blood of those people, in my view, it pools at the feet of those who would sell out their country for a cheap bottom line.”
He concluded the portion highlighted by Boyd with an announcement involving manufacturing investment in Middletown.
“And that brings me to why I’m here today, because we’re not just here to talk about the celebration and the good news and the numbers. We’re here to announce that Cleveland-Cliffs is making today, right here in Middletown, Ohio, a $1 billion investment in transformational manufacturing right here in our home.”
Boyd said the investment represents the type of productive expansion at the center of the administration’s economic strategy. She argued that Bessent and Vance are pursuing a model that ties national economic strength to domestic manufacturing, technological development and increased productive capacity.
“If the vice president keeps giving these kinds of speeches and the president and Scott Bessent keep implementing Hamilton’s policies, the midterms will be theirs. Getting this message out widely will make that victory possible. That’s our job at Promethean Action.”
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