Secretary Bessent, welcome back to All In. We appreciate you taking the time to catch up with us and provide this first year in review.

We're excited to have you here and hear how things are going and what's ahead regarding the fiscal condition of the U.S. government, the economic condition of the U.S. economy, including how things are going for Wall Street and Main Street.

And finally, we'd like to broadly discuss some of the administration's policies, decisions,

and how they're playing out or will play out from your point of view.

I'll start us off. And maybe to catch up on our last conversation, one of the things that I've

cared deeply about and which you shared an

objective around is getting the budget deficit below 3% of GDP. I'd love to hear from your point

of view how that's going and how things are looking for fiscal year 26, the actions that have

been taken and what you think is ahead for that target.

Good to be with you. Happy to review the year. Talk about next year. There's a lot going on.

I would categorize 2025. We had some important victories, some important policy announcements,

some important movement. But as I've described it, 2025 was setting the table.

And especially on the economy, I think the feast and the banquet's going to be in 2026.

To start with the budget deficit, we didn't get much credit because it came out during the shutdown.

The U.S. fiscal years on September 30th, we had a slight fiscal contraction for the year.

Wasn't much, but much better than the $2.0 trillion that was estimated.

We came down from about $1.8 trillion trillion to 1.78. So a contraction, nonetheless,

for the calendar year, we're making great progress. And just to put it in context,

by administration, they blew things out trying to get Vice President Harris elected in the fourth quarter. So

last year, 2024, 40% of the government spending occurred in the fourth quarter as they

had the unsuccessful, or their unsuccessful attempt to convince voters that they weren't in a world of hurt.

I forecast that we will have approximately a 200 to 300 billion fiscal contraction for the calendar year,

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