Learn English with Scott Besson and over 1,000 Turning Point USA High School and College Chapters across the country to discuss Financial Literacy. Learn how you can protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.co/thecharliekirk show.
00:00:44.000He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:00:50.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:02.000Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of The Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals.
00:01:12.000Learn how you can protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com.
00:01:27.000We are going to be joined by the Treasury Secretary of the United States and a friend of mine, Scott Besson, and over 1,000 Turning Point USA high school and college chapters across the country to discuss financial literacy.
00:01:43.000We know with all the economic pressures that are facing the next generation, as you can see, they're populating up on screen all of our amazing turning point leaders.
00:01:52.000That's the future of America right there.
00:01:53.000I'll tell you what, with all of the financial pressures facing the next generation, inflation, cost of housing, it's more important than ever to teach financial literacy how to save money, how to invest, how to invest.
00:02:17.000This stuff needs to be taught in our schools, and we are trying to lead the charge here with our Turning Point USA students.
00:02:22.000Without any further ado, let me welcome the Secretary of Treasury of the United States who's doing a phenomenal job in the first 100 days here, Scott Besson.
00:02:42.000And what we have here is over a thousand of our Turning Point USA chapters, high school and college chapters, that quite honestly, in the next half an hour to 45 minutes, they're going to learn more about financial literacy because it's not taught in our schools.
00:03:18.000I'm 62, but when I was younger, it actually used to be taught.
00:03:23.000And everyone used to think home economics was how to cook, how to keep a house, but it was also how to keep a budget.
00:03:32.000And somehow home economics disappeared, shop disappeared, and all these other kind of strange transgender studies things showed up, and somehow they were more important than teaching people how to be self-sufficient.
00:03:51.000I went to MacArthur Middle School, and we had HOMAC, and they got rid of it a couple years later, and it was very helpful because it was all about how to balance a checkbook, what is saving, what is investing, as well as some of the more basic stuff, how to do laundry, how to...
00:04:40.000And Secretary Besson, it's a pleasure to be speaking with you tonight.
00:04:45.000And I have a question for you, Mr. Secretary.
00:04:47.000So what practical changes is the Trump administration making that are going to be helping young people, such as, number one, get married, two, own a home, number three, afford kids?
00:05:00.000For kids, because this is really a big reason why President Trump won back in November.
00:05:05.000Young people were looking at being the first generation since Washington, where they weren't, you know, expected to be as well off as their parents were.
00:05:15.000Trey, all three excellent points, and I don't know if you know it, I am from South Carolina, so go Gamecocks.
00:05:25.000And at the Trump administration, We are trying to address this incredible affordability crisis that was created by the last administration and it was a combination of...
00:05:41.000The out-of-control prices, the out-of-control government debt, and we'll come back to that on why that's very important.
00:05:49.000If I was a young person, not fair for my generation to pass it down and then bring down interest rates, bring down the energy cost, and also create economic security because one of my...
00:06:07.000big sayings is that economic security is national security, national security is economic security, and they're really tied together.
00:06:20.000I think one of the few good things to come from COVID was it was a beta test that if we got into a kinetic war, could the U.S. be self-sufficient?
00:07:11.000And then they were going to come and say, we have to raise taxes.
00:07:14.000And we were going to become like a European-style social democracy.
00:07:19.000And in this slow-growth, high-tax environment, that's the worst thing that young people like you could start out in.
00:07:28.000And then the last thing is the high government debt.
00:07:32.000The pushes up interest rates, so we have a plan to bring down the government debt and also to make the U.S. energy independent and keep energy prices low.
00:07:56.000And I want to add on to that just a second as we get Ryan queued up here from Wichita State University, which is when young people do not own stuff, when young people do not have a stake in the American dream, it can set the prerequisite for radical socialist politics.
00:08:13.000Ownership of goods, ownership of property is a necessary ingredient for the flourishing of the American middle class.
00:08:22.000You know, one of the biggest lies being sold to American people right now is that you're in control of your money, especially when it comes to crypto.
00:08:28.000But the truth, most of these so-called crypto platforms are just banks in disguise, fully capable of freezing your assets the moment some bureaucrat makes a phone call.
00:08:37.000That is not what Bitcoin was built for.
00:08:53.000Not some three-letter agency that thinks it knows better than you do.
00:08:56.000This is how it was intended by the original creators of Bitcoin.
00:08:59.000Peer-to-peer money, free from centralized control, free from surveillance, and free from arbitrary seizure.
00:09:05.000So if you're serious about financial sovereignty, go to Bitcoin.com, set up your wallet, take back control, because if you don't hold the keys, you don't own your money.
00:11:47.000You want your money to be in a safe and sound bank, but many people get very lazy, and if you have a money market account and a checking account...
00:11:58.000The money market account is probably going to pay a lot more.
00:12:01.000It can be a little bit of a pain every week or every month, but keep the money in the high-earning account and then just move it over to checking or debit as you need it.
00:12:13.000And the main thing, too, is just when you're young, don't get over your head in debt.
00:12:37.000And before you know it, you're into the semester, you're two semesters, you're over your head in debt, you're having trouble making ends meet, maybe have to drop out of school for a while, get a job, your grades.
00:13:00.000And that's really important, guys, to understand also, and I'm sure we'll get to this at some point in the conversation, but if we don't, learn the tax laws now.
00:13:07.000Mr. Secretary's working on a phenomenal tax bill with the president that will hopefully go no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and all that other stuff.
00:13:14.000But understand that a mortgage actually has some tax benefits to it to a home.
00:13:19.000So understand that credit card debt has no such advantages in the tax code system.
00:13:25.000In fact, you want to try to borrow money on something that gets more valuable.
00:13:30.000By the way, that was the argument for student loan debt in a year past, right?
00:14:56.000What President Trump has instructed me to do is to put in great economic policies that makes the United States the best place to invest, the best place to compound your capital, best place for innovation, best place for upward social mobility,
00:15:14.000wealth accumulation, to be able to keep more of what you make.
00:15:21.000But a very attractive destination for foreigners to bring in their money.
00:15:26.000Because we take the stability that we have here for granted.
00:15:30.000We take the fact that our markets are free and fair.
00:16:03.000People, like Argentinians, want to put their money here.
00:16:06.000And then why is it important to be the reserve currency?
00:16:10.000Because it gives us low-cost borrowing, gives us...
00:16:17.000The authority over the rest of the world in terms of issuing debt, in terms of the world is priced in dollars, so it gives U.S. companies an advantage, gives the U.S. government an advantage for borrowing,
00:17:44.000The fact that these countries were trying to assemble an alternative to the dollar, a big problem.
00:17:51.000What does a mechanic and auto shop owner in Georgia, a taco restaurant operator in Arizona, and a life-saving medical innovator in Tennessee have in common?
00:18:00.000They're all small business owners, and they're all thriving on TikTok.
00:18:04.000Across the U.S., over 7.5 million businesses, from family-owned shops to entrepreneurs, are using TikTok to compete and grow.
00:18:10.000We use TikTok all the time on The Charlie Kirk Show.
00:18:13.000In fact, 74% of businesses on TikTok say TikTok has allowed them to scale their operations, increasing sales, and expanding to new locations.
00:20:18.000So the average household in America, the cost of regulation increased by about $3,000 per year under President Biden, and we are working on cutting that back.
00:20:34.000So you should be able to see a substantial decrease in regulatory burden.
00:21:03.000And one of the advantages we have is our people, our obviously World Reserve currency status, the entrepreneurial capacity of America, also artificial intelligence.
00:21:57.000You know, over the short term during periods of shortages, but they want to come right back down.
00:22:02.000What happened was this terrible combination of what the Biden administration did, and it was exactly the opposite of what President Trump did under his first administration.
00:22:26.000There's more supply of goods and services.
00:22:29.000So there was a demand shock for goods because people had more disposable income.
00:22:38.000At the same time, there was a supply response, so there was a greater supply of everything, and there was very low inflation, about 2%, which is the long-term average.
00:22:50.000Under the Biden administration, they were playing with fire anyway, and there were the COVID shortages, but they had a federal spending shock that was, as Charlie said, debt-financed.
00:23:04.000And then they put in more regulations.
00:23:07.000So more regulations meant less supply, higher energy prices, higher house prices.
00:23:13.000So that was really the recipe for inflation.
00:23:18.000And what we're trying to do right now is deregulate, get the private sector going again.
00:23:26.000The Biden administration, with this big spending, it was government jobs, and we are trying to do what I call re-privatizing the economy, bring down government spending, re-leverage the private sector.
00:23:45.000I think that we are going to be very successful in that.
00:23:52.000So supply and demand, the more there is of something, the more the price will come down.
00:24:00.000And we've stopped this crazy money printing, and we're going to get our borrowing under control because, like I said, it is for all of you on this call that it is not fair what has happened.
00:24:13.000To leave you with this gigantic debt stack that you're going to have to work your way out of.
00:24:19.000And I want to just piggyback on that, and let's add more context and color, if I could ask a follow-up, Mr. Secretary, which is that in 2008-2009, our leaders had to make a choice.
00:24:47.000But what was disturbing is that this prosperity from 2008 onward has, of course, been materially prosperous for some Americans, but it has actually only made the wealthier even wealthier, the wealthy wealthier, and it's been very hard for the middle class to own stuff post-2008 financial crisis because we have a government debt-financed economic system.
00:25:09.000Turning that off, if not managed correctly, can be very troublesome.
00:25:14.000Can you speak to the balancing act that you and President Trump have to navigate from the bond markets?
00:25:20.000Because being able to deal with all that, once you go and you let's just say indulge in cheap money, good luck getting away from it.
00:26:03.000Tell some of the members of Congress, they're good men and women, and they want to bring the deficit to zero tomorrow.
00:26:12.000And I said, look, our fiscal situation, we have a 350-pound, two-pack-a-day patient on the ICU table.
00:26:23.000And he or she is not going to hop out of the hospital bed and run the Hawaiian Ironman.
00:26:30.000What we're going to do is do it slowly because we didn't get here in one year.
00:26:36.000We're going to bring down the deficit about a percent every year and during President Trump's term.
00:26:45.000And if we do that, we'll start paying down debt and creating value.
00:26:50.000The other thing, too, is I don't want to scare all of you because one great thing that you have to look forward to is this incredible productivity boom.
00:27:02.000What really creates wealth is productivity.
00:27:06.000The same number of people working either the same hours or fewer hours for more output.
00:27:16.000And with this AI boom that's going to be driven by the U.S. lead in technology and the U.S. lead in energy, and that's going to be the real secret sauce that you all are going to see for the next 10,
00:27:32.00020 years of your lives in the U.S., that no one else has that combination.
00:27:37.000We have the world's greatest technology sector, and we have the world's...
00:27:43.000So, you know, if you think about a barbell economy, we have technology on one side, energy on the other, and they're going to meet with AI.
00:27:53.000And then what President Trump has instructed his cabinet, the econ team like me to do, is to fill in the middle and bring back high-performance manufacturing jobs.
00:28:06.000So, you know, before, either you had to be in high tech.
00:28:10.000It had to be in energy, and everything in between just got decimated.
00:28:28.000So we're not going to bring back the jobs of the past.
00:28:32.000We're going to have the jobs of the future here.
00:28:34.000And these are going to be high-tech, high-value.
00:28:40.000And someone on the left took a shot at me the other day that said, oh, Secretary Besant says that all federal workers are all going to work in factories.
00:28:52.000And I said, you know, that's so reductionist that a factory isn't just someone who works on the factory floor.
00:28:59.000And by the way, what's wrong with that?
00:29:16.000So I just think that the U.S. has just the right combination right now of technology and energy, and then we're going to fill out everything in between.
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00:32:36.000So I ended up at the Circle K on Meeting Street in Charleston, South Carolina, most mornings.
00:32:43.000Before I came to D.C., dressed like this, lots of the mostly young working class construction workers, mostly African-American, in there in the morning and buying lottery tickets.
00:32:58.000And they'd say, Mr., when I win the lottery, will you manage my money for me?
00:33:08.000And I was sitting there thinking, if these young men were putting that same $10 or $20 a week into a crypto account, if they'd been buying Bitcoin for five years, they'd own the Circle K. And I think what we're trying to do in the U.S.,
00:33:30.000the Biden administration really tried to make digital assets extinct.
00:37:12.000In my career, and then I'll get off, Charlie, is that I graduated from college in the mid-80s.
00:37:19.000It was a crash of 87. There are these financialists, the savings and loan crisis, the Asia crisis, the dot-com...
00:37:31.000Let's just say the dot-com bubble burst in 2000.
00:37:35.000I think Amazon stock may have gone from 100 to 3. And Warren Buffett says the biggest mistake that he ever made was not Jeff Bezos came to him and said, you know, would you finance me?
00:37:55.000Try to have a long-term, when you see a crisis or when you see a dislocation, it's probably a better word, think about the long-term and always have some liquidity on the side.
00:38:09.000In 1987, stock market crash was down 20-something percent in one day, and I worked for this Middle Eastern family, and I...
00:38:23.000I was like, oh my God, what are we going to do?
00:38:26.000And the daughter of the family, who's only, if I was 25, she was 35. She came over calmly and she said, we've been saving up for a rainy day and this is a great time to get involved.
00:38:41.000So have enough liquidity for a rainy day.
00:38:49.000Over the course of your life, be prepared to take advantage of very interesting situations and always know your risk tolerance.