“For everyone who thinks these market declines are all based on the president’s economic policies, I can tell you that this market decline started with the Chinese AI announcement of DeepSeek,” Bessent told conservative commentator Tucker Carlson.
“If I were to analyse in my old hat, and this is the only time I’m going to talk about it … what’s happening with the market I’d say it’s more a Mag 7 problem, not a Maga problem,” said Bessent, who ran a hedge fund until being tapped as Treasury secretary by Trump.
“Mag 7” refers to the shares of the so-called Magnificent 7 – a group of seven high-performing tech stocks that had helped drive the market higher before its recent sell-off. Maga refers to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” political slogan.
US stocks have tumbled by around 10 per cent in the two days since Trump announced a new global tariff regime that was more aggressive than analysts and investors had been anticipating.
Stocks did take a hit in late January when Chinese start-up DeepSeek launched a new AI model that was developed at a fraction of the cost of incumbent services. It resulted in a record one-day loss of nearly US$600 billion in value from the shares of AI chipmaker Nvidia, one of the Magnificent 7.
