Remarks by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent before the 2026 Reagan National Economic Forum: While America Slept

Remarks by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent before the 2026 Reagan National Economic Forum: While America Slept

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 me to join you.

Of course, this year’s forum carries special significance as we celebrate 250 years of the American story. But milestones of this magnitude demand more than ceremony. They ask something of us. They invite us to reflect not just on the creation of our country, but on its condition. 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.

President Reagan himself understood that renewal begins with reflection. “One thing that has made our Republic great,” he said, “is that we don’t hide from our mistakes. We learn from them; then we go on and do things better than we did before.”

That is the spirit in which I want to speak with you today—with candor and with confidence in our capacity to deliver another 250 years of American economic leadership.

The truth is that for too long, America had been asleep. We mistook comfort for strength.

We treated efficiency as a substitute for resilience, and consumption as a measure of prosperity.

We told ourselves that so long as goods were cheaper overseas, it did not matter whether factories went dark in Michigan, Ohio, or Pennsylvania. We assumed that supply chains would always function smoothly, adversaries would always behave responsibly, and the invisible hand would correct vulnerabilities that too few in public life had the courage to confront. And while we reassured ourselves with those assumptions, risks accumulated all around us.

Somewhere along the way, we lost sight of a foundational principle that previous generations understood instinctively: economic security is national security, for a nation that cannot manufacture, mine, ship, or refine its needs gradually cedes its strength—and sovereignty—to others. That is a dangerous dependency for any country. It is an unacceptable one for the United States.

Now, nations rarely cede their security in a single moment. More often, they drift into dependence through a series of politically expedient decisions. For our part, we made a series of mistakes—some bipartisan, others ideological, and many defended long after their costs became impossible to ignore.

One was treating trade policy as though it existed apart from national strategy. We convinced ourselves that we could pursue commercial partnerships in one silo while managing security relationships in another—as if the world would honor those distinctions. But a nation that relies on a rival for critical inputs, finances the rise of countries that do not share its interests, and allows its own productive base to erode while promising to defend the international order will find, sooner or later, that those two silos collapse into each other.

As damaging was our willingness to extend strategic trust where it had not been earned. 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. Instead, we left our workers to compete against state-led subsidies, excess capacity, and practices that distort trade and undermine reciprocity.

We assumed the rules-based system would discipline these behaviors only to find that in too many sectors, it accommodated them.

And in the name of efficiency, we began to celebrate “just in time” while neglecting “just in case.”

The pandemic did not create our brittle supply chains so much as expose them.

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 produced here at home.

Regrettably, our recovery from the pandemic did not bring reform under the prior Administration. Today, the United States still imports most of the rare earth minerals that are essential to the technologies that will shape military and economic power in the 21st century. Only a small share of the active pharmaceutical ingredients that we use in the United States are made here. 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 has been asleep,” I do not mean that no one warned us. In fact, many did. Workers warned us when their plants shuttered and communities decayed. Military planners warned us when supply chains narrowed. Manufacturers warned us about subsidized competitors and dumped products. Public health officials warned us about pharmaceutical dependencies. The warning lights were glaring all around us. 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.

Beneath every one of those mistakes lay a more basic failure in our philosophy.

In reducing economics to consumption, we forgot production.

We measured abundance at the checkout counter rather than the factory gate.

We talked about GDP, but not enough about its composition. 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.

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: engineers and welders, tool-and-die makers and logistics networks, plant managers and workers who know how to solve problems on the factory floor. When that ecosystem is strong, a country can adapt quickly. When it is hollowed out, adaptation becomes slower, more costly, and less certain.

We saw this during COVID and the scramble for ventilators, masks, and other medical equipment. 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.

Surge capacity cannot just be conjured overnight. It must be built before a crisis arrives.

And a country that allows its defense-industrial base to shrink in the quiet years should not be surprised when it struggles to replenish stocks in the dangerous ones.

In a crisis, the nation with a broad and skilled industrial base has options. The nation that has hollowed out that base 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.

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.

And to allow foreign dependencies to degrade any one of those domains is to allow them to define America’s future.

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.

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-reciprocity, industrial hollowing, and strategic import dependence are not questions of commerce alone—they are fissures in our country’s foundation.

A few weeks later, President Trump signed executive action on processed critical minerals and derivative products under Section 232, expressly linking import dependence to risks for national security, defense readiness, price stability, and economic resilience. Some have tried to weaponize critical minerals against us, but this Administration is ensuring that they will not succeed.

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 U.S. shipbuilding capabilities. This is what it looks like to connect industrial capacity, logistics resilience, workforce development, and national security in one strategic frame.

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. 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 consumables, devices, and robotics. The strategic message is unmistakable: supply chain resilience in medicine will no longer be an afterthought. This broader reorientation 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 interests.

Taken together, these efforts reflect the broader principle that President Trump has articulated clearly: economic security is national security. But let me be direct about what this doctrine does not mean.

It does not mean retreating from the world. On the contrary, it means engaging with it on stronger, fairer, and more sustainable terms.

It does not mean severing ties indiscriminately. It means distinguishing healthy interdependence from dangerous overdependence.

It does not mean rejecting efficiency. 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.

Of course, America still holds enormous advantages, among them the world’s deepest capital markets, extraordinary innovators, abundant energy potential, leading universities, an unmatched entrepreneurial culture, and workers who can out-build and out-compete anyone so long as the playing field is fair. All we needed was a government willing to declare that as decline is a choice, renewal can be one, too.

So yes, while America slept, our vulnerabilities grew.

While America slept, too many leaders accepted frail supply chains as the price of modern life.

While America slept, we let industrial capacity erode and Main Street decay. We tolerated unfairness in the name of stability and conflated market access with strategic success.

But America has awakened.

We are alert to the fact that a resilient economy is the foundation of a strong republic.

That we can measure the health of our economy not merely by what it produces, but by whom it lifts.

That secure supply chains matter as much as stock indices. That productive capacity is power.

That trade policy, industrial policy, and national security policy must all fit together, or they will each fail separately.

So 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, and if we prize resilience alongside prosperity as President Trump has been doing, then this country will not simply patch over vulnerabilities. It will enter a new season of national strength with a more robust Main Street and industrial base than ever before. Safer supply chains. More secure medicines. More reliable access to critical minerals. A revived maritime capacity. A financial system aligned with national purpose. And trading partnerships that reinforce, rather than undermine, our security relationships.

Indeed, the strength of this Republic lies not in denying that the old consensus failed. Instead, 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.

While America slept, our vulnerabilities grew.

But under President Trump’s leadership, we are alert to the risks we can no longer ignore—and attuned to the responsibilities we can no longer defer.

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 further in conversation with Larry.

Thank you.