One of President Trump’s top economic advisers on Monday brushed off news that Moody’s Ratings downgraded the U.S. creditworthiness, saying he would still give the U.S. economy the top triple-A rating.
In an interview on Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria,” host Maria Bartiromo asked White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett about the drop in the U.S. government’s credit rating, from “Aaa” to “Aa1.”
“Make no mistake, the U.S. debt is the safest bet on Earth. There is no country’s debt that I’d rather have than the United States’s. And so, Moody’s can do what it wants to,” Hassett told Bartiromo about the downgrade.
Hassett cited Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s explanation of the credit rating drop.
“As Secretary Bessent said, it’s a backward-looking thing, penalizing us for all the reckless spending of the Biden administration. But we’re cutting spending. We’re deregulating. We’ve got supply-side growth,” Hassett said.
“We’ve got every reason in the world to believe that we’re going to have the best economy on Earth,” he continued. “If you have the best economy on Earth, you’re going to have the best debt on Earth too. And that’s the way I would rate it.”
The Moody’s ratings agency downgraded U.S. creditworthiness Friday as Republicans work to pass a massive bill to cut taxes and spending that would add nearly $4 trillion to the federal deficit.
Moody’s cited concerns over the federal government’s increased debts and interest payments, which have accounted for a growing share of federal spending each year and, for the first time last year, surpassed $1 trillion, accounting for approximately 13 percent of government spending.
The agency said in a statement that the downgrade reflects the increase “in government debt and interest payment ratios to levels that are significantly higher than similarly rated sovereigns.”
Asked about some House Republicans’ concerns over adding trillions to the national debt in Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill,” Hassett said members should raise the debt ceiling as they always do to avoid any further risk to the government’s credit rating.
“I think that the debt ceiling is going to go up with the ‘big, beautiful bill.’ It always goes up. It’s going to go up. And so, people should just be done with it and raise the debt ceiling to reduce that risk,” he said.
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