ASHEVILLE, N.C. — President Donald Trump's administration plans to impose sanctions on another bank this week as it intensifies efforts to economically isolate Iran, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told The Associated Press on Sunday.
“This is going to be financial violence if we have to,” Bessent said in the interview. “We are showing people that we know who you are, you know who you are, and this has got to stop.”
Bessent spoke with the AP ahead of Group of 20 meetings in Asheville, North Carolina, where he will huddle individually with his counterparts from the world's major and developing economies to encourage cooperation against Iran.
He said he plans to focus on encouraging economic growth in his meetings, which are taking place as he faces scrutiny for an unusual bond buyback program and his approach to $40 trillion in U.S. debt, and he defended the Treasury's decision to exclude certain reporters from covering the event.
Bessent did not name the bank that would face sanctions this week. His comments come after the Trump administration signaled that it would shift from military strikes to economic pressure during a war that recently reached the six-month mark, promising what it called an "economic D-Day" against a country that has already weathered decades of punishing sanctions.
The US is trying to squeeze Iran
However, hostilities between the U.S. and Iran flared on Sunday. U.S. forces struck Iranian rocket launchers on the Strait of Hormuz in their first military action in a month, breaking a lull in fighting. Iran vowed to retaliate for what it called a deadly attack.
In addition, the administration has mostly relied on warnings rather than new sanctions against Iran's trading partners. There's also the question of how Trump will handle China, which is Iran's biggest trading partner and leading buyer of its oil.
Bessent told the AP he would speak to his Chinese counterparts at the G20 meeting and "all options are on the table" in terms of sanctioning Beijing for its continued purchases.
But he rejected the idea that the administration was reluctant to confront China, calling it "a completely false narrative that the media picked up on." He insisted that China and the U.S. agree on the need to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
Treasury's first official action in this campaign of economic pressure was a proposed rulemaking on Friday, which would, if finalized, sever the Emirati branches of Banque Misr, Egypt's second-largest bank, from access to the U.S. financial system.
In stopping short of imposing sanctions on the Egyptian bank, the Republican administration appeared to be signaling its reluctance to penalize major trading partners that do business with Iran, including China and India.
Treasury restricted media access to G20 meeting
The Treasury barred certain reporters from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News from covering the G20 meetings.
The Times said it was “not just another disturbing effort by the administration to undermine independent journalism, but a blatant attempt to evade public scrutiny.”
Treasury officials have not explained their decision.
Bessent defended the exclusion by telling the AP that “it has nothing to do with point of view.”
Bessent faces scrutiny on bond market
Bessent said he wanted to focus on growth at the summit with his counterparts.
“The world has this mountain of debt, and we do have to grow our way out of it because you know there are many countries that have very large budget deficits, but they also have zero growth,” he said.
Bessent surprised financial markets earlier this month with an unusual intervention into the bond market that sparked criticism that the administration has not done enough to address fiscal issues.
The move – which occurred on the same day the U.S. debt topped $40 trillion — was seen as a way to try to put a cap on rising bond yields, which have pushed up borrowing costs for consumers.
Some of the sharpest criticism came from Stan Druckenmiller, CEO of Duquesne Family Office LLC — a former boss of Bessent's in the 1990s — who wrote in The Wall Street Journal that the Treasury Department was on “the wrong side of that trade” and needed to do more to address the deficit.
Bessent promises action on debt and deficit
Asked about the criticism, Bessent acknowledged that “we’ve been in touch” and said: “Stan’s a great money manager. He changes his mind a lot.”
“He’s twice called for the U.S. to default on its debt — once in the 1990s, and once in 2011 — so he likes extreme measures. I don’t think we’re at the point where we need extreme measures yet,” Bessent said.
Druckenmiller in a 2011 interview said a technical default on the debt “would be horrible” but not “the end of the world” if it led to measures that reined in spending on U.S. government programs.
Bessent told the AP that he was working with Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, on a fiscal package to bring down the debt and deficit that would be revealed in coming weeks.
He also argued that long-term U.S. bond yields were down in August “for all the noise” and said that rising yields were “a global phenomenon.”
Bessent blamed tariff refunds for the deficit hike. The government was forced to refund some tariffs paid by businesses after the U.S. Supreme Court said Trump had overstepped his authority with sweeping tariffs on imports from most countries.