Our economy is amazingly resilient, amazingly resilient.

Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner.

We're an economy's very hard to break.

Names forever linked in the financial crisis of 2008 and 9.

The two served as consecutive Treasury Secretaries, Paulson for George W. Bush,

and Geithner for Barack Obama. And today, as co-chairs of the Aspen Institute's nonprofit program,

they're hosting leaders in Colorado to tackle America's biggest economic issues, like President

Trump's tariffs. Tariffs are a bad tax. They're like a corrosive tax on American manufacturers.

They're aggressive in their impact.

Paulson on the distortion among American businesses.

I think the thing that I dislike the most is that they're uneven, right?

And so they're uneven.

They punish some.

It benefit other.

I'm talking about within the U.S. economy.

Geithner says it may not be enough to break the economy, but it is enough to shock things.

That strength of treasuries and the dollar in some ways reflects a level of basic confidence

in American policy competence, a basic confidence that ultimately the U.S. political system will

do the sensible things to preserve the value of foreign investment in the United States.

And there is a bit more of a shadow over those things than there's been in some time.

I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer.

Squawk Pod reports from the Aspen Economic Strategy Group Forum with Tim Geithner and Hank Paulson

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