摘要：美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）资深分析师斯蒂芬·科林森在9月9日的分析文章中指出，特朗普的两位高级经济助手财政部长斯科特·贝森特与联邦住房金融局局长比尔·普尔泰差点打起来，为“经济崩溃”一词赋予了新的含义。主要内容如下：

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财政部长斯科特·贝森特与联邦住房金融局局长比尔·普尔泰为争宠差点打起来

美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）资深分析师斯蒂芬·科林森在9月9日的分析文章中指出，特朗普的两位高级经济助手财政部长斯科特·贝森特与联邦住房金融局局长比尔·普尔泰差点打起来，为“经济崩溃”一词赋予了新的含义。主要内容如下：

一、美经济处于就业下滑边缘，可能陷入更深衰退

眼下美国经济正处于就业下滑的悬崖边缘，且有可能陷入更深层次的衰退，而有报道称，唐纳德·特朗普总统的核心财政团队的两名成员险些拳脚相向，这绝非令人安心的事件。

但上周有消息称，财政部长斯科特·贝森特在一家高端“让美国再次伟大”俱乐部威胁要一拳打在联邦住房金融局局长比尔·普尔泰脸上，这则消息成了华盛顿政坛一则不胫而走的热门八卦。

两名了解当晚情况的人士透露，这场险些发生的斗殴，导火索是贝森特认为普尔泰在“大老板”特朗普面前说自己的坏话。这一闹剧不仅让人想起白宫同僚们曾听到贝森特大声威胁时任特朗普高级顾问的埃隆·马斯克，更可能让人联想到美国历史上首任财政部长亚历山大·汉密尔顿1804年与副总统阿伦·伯尔的著名决斗。

这一事件进一步揭示了特朗普智囊团内部的紧张局势，其中的两点令人忧心。

首先，这一由《政客》杂志首次披露的内斗揭开了特朗普政府“争宠”式政治运作的盖子。特朗普第二届政府的恶性内斗原本比第一届要少，因为他不再任用不忠诚于自己的官员。但贝森特与普尔泰这场争宠式“笼斗”表明，特朗普重返白宫后的8个月里，政府内部混乱嘈杂，且这种混乱已开始产生负面影响。

对于高级助手险些斗殴的报道，大多数总统都会感到震惊反感。而特朗普终究是特朗普，他却乐见这种摩擦，认为这可以让互相争斗的助手们彼此制衡，更加忠诚于自己。

因对统计数据不满，特朗普解除劳工统计局局长职务

二、特朗普核心圈子成员内斗的深层原因

一场鸡尾酒会上的闹剧之所以会给全球敲响警钟，背后有一个更严重的原因。因为这场争吵揭示了一个事实：在“让美国再次伟大”阵营中，唯一的“硬通货”是对特朗普的绝对忠诚。

贝森特之所以暴怒，显然是因为他认为同事在背后向特朗普说自己的坏话。作为在华盛顿残酷政治博弈中崭露头角的资深“圈内人”，贝森特很清楚，要胜任自己的工作：稳定市场、疏导总统最极端的冲动、维护全球经济稳定，就必须得到特朗普的绝对信任。一旦特朗普对某人产生反感，此人便很难再挽回局面。如果贝森特开始察觉到自己失宠，投资者可能会陷入恐慌。

显而易见，特朗普手下官员的首要职责并非服务公众，而是迎合他“伟大领袖”的自我形象。正因如此，才会在特朗普的内阁会议上出现内阁成员争先恐后发表绝对服从和谄媚性恭维的发言。

但阿谀奉承是有代价的。特朗普的团队必须对他说“他想听的话”，而非“他该听的话”。这种自我审查对总统而言向来危险。即便在正常时期，总统也会生活在充满顺从的“信息茧房”中。

而在特朗普执政下，这种危险更甚：因为他正在进行数十年来风险最高、最离经叛道的经济实验。他发动的关税战已经摧毁了曾让美国成为全球最强经济体的全球贸易体系。如今，特朗普还想摧毁美国金融优势的另一块基石：美联储的独立性。

他不仅在执着于实现自己长期以来的另一个目标：大幅削减利率，还可能染指美联储的其他权力杠杆，例如银行监管和紧急救助。一旦发生重大金融动荡，这种权力干预可能会让他和他的富豪朋友们从中获利。

普尔泰最近已成为特朗普圈子的核心人物，因为他所领导的联邦住房金融局一直在调查特朗普的主要“打击目标”提交的抵押贷款文件中据称存在的违规行为，其中包括特朗普正试图解除其美联储理事职务的莉萨·库克。

特朗普宣布美联储理事解除莉萨·库克（右）的职务并多次威胁鲍威尔

三、关税导致的惨淡就业和物价上涨致命特朗普支持率下跌

就在特朗普核心经济团队内斗的消息曝光前几天，一份惨淡的就业报告已显示，特朗普怪异的经济政策开始造成破坏。这份9月5日发布的报告显示，美国经济上月仅新增2.2万个就业岗位。数据还显示，消费品行业正受到多重打击：关税推高物价、关税政策实施方式反复无常，以及由此导致的招聘放缓。而向来被视为经济“晴雨表”的美国黑人和年轻人就业率，正迅速恶化。

但特朗普的官员们无法在公开场合如实解读这些数据，因为他们要避免触怒总统。在特朗普解雇劳工统计局局长一个月后，他的高级助手们仍在坚称“数据不准确”。

在近期的电视访谈节目中，贝森特称8月是就业数据“最不稳定”的月份；国家经济委员会主任凯文·哈塞特则警告数据存在“矛盾”；而特朗普口中的“黄金时代”头号吹鼓手、商务部长霍华德·卢特尼克在CNBC上表示：“等着瞧吧，一年后的今天，数据一定会好到惊人。”

马里兰州银泉市，求职者排队进入一场招聘会

我们当然希望他们是对的。或许特朗普的非常规政策真能带来回报：就业岗位回流、制造业繁荣；或许更低的利率真能拉动经济增长。毕竟，美国经济过去曾多次让那些看衰其韧性的人被“打脸”。

但要实现这一点，几乎需要让大多数人所了解的经济学常识全部失效。

周日NBC《会见新闻界》节目中的一幕令人忧心。财长贝森特这位本应严谨的官员，做出了一番难以让人信服的表态：他拒绝认同几乎所有权威经济学家的共识：关税本质上是对消费者征收的税。贝森特说：“不，我不这么认为。”他还称，投资银行巨头高盛集团“不可信”。高盛此前的测算认为，大多数关税成本最终由美国消费者承担。贝森特此前还曾辩称：“关税引发通胀”的说法是“无稽之谈”。

因为只要他给出任何其他答案：即认同经济学家共识，不仅会破坏他与特朗普的关系，还会给普尔泰等政府内部所谓的“对手”提供新的攻击弹药。

但在2024年大选中，多数选民投票给特朗普，是希望他能缓解食品和住房价格高企带来的巨大焦虑。

如今，特朗普一边通过威胁向芝加哥派兵、加快大规模驱逐移民的步伐来巩固其核心支持者的支持，一边却忽视了大多数美国人真正的诉求：修复经济。哥伦比亚广播公司上周发布的民调显示，仅36%的选民认为当前经济状况良好；约64%的选民认为近几周物价仍在上涨；56%的选民认为经济正走向恶化。美国全国广播公司的最新民调则显示，特朗普在关键经济议题上的支持率持续下滑：仅39%的选民认可他应对通胀的举措，41%的选民支持他的贸易与关税政策。在经济议题上，他如今仅能依靠最核心的支持者，而已失去了曾助他重返白宫的独立选民和较为温和的跨党派选民的支持。

两党公共政策组织“经济创新集团”的编辑主任卡迪夫·加西亚9月8日向CNN记者奥迪·科尼什表示，美国劳动者对经济前景和特朗普的关税政策越来越悲观。他说：“他们最担心的问题，其实和拜登政府时期没什么两样：基本商品和服务的价格，以及住房成本。他们真心希望政府和国会能把精力放在这些问题上。在劳动者看来，关税政策目前根本不该是总统的优先事项，它在需优先解决的议题中排名垫底。”

经济正处于危险边缘，数据持续恶化，而总统核心团队的两名高级官员却险些大打出手。难怪整个国家都在忧心忡忡。

Why a near-fistfight at a MAGA nightspot spells danger for the global economy. Analysis by Stephen Collinson on CNN. September 9, 2025.

It gives new meaning to the term economic meltdown.

Reports that fists almost flew between two members of President Donald Trump’s crack finance team are hardly reassuring with the economy perched on the precipice of a jobs slump and a possible deeper slowdown.

But the story that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent threatened to punch Federal Housing Finance Agency chief Bill Pulte in the face at an exclusive MAGA club last week is a sensational morsel of Beltway gossip.

The spur for the near-fisticuffs was Bessent’s belief that Pulte had bad-mouthed him to the big boss, two sources familiar with the evening told CNN. The White House declined to comment. CNN has reached out to the offices of the alleged potential pugilists.

Bessent’s combativeness — he allegedly told Pulte he wanted to “take the matter outside” — might draw quips about the first Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton and the most notorious duel in American history.

But it offers two worrying insights into tensions inside Trump’s brain trust at a pivotal moment.

First, the supposed showdown, first reported by Politico, lifts the lid on Trump’s nest-of-vipers political operation. Trump’s second administration has lagged the vicious infighting of his first, since he’s jettisoned anyone who saw themselves as an “adult in the room.” But the Bessent-Pulte bureaucratic cage match shows that Trump’s eight cacophonous months back in power are taking a toll.

The true currency of Trump world

Most presidents would recoil in horror at reports of senior aides on the verge of a brawl. Former President Barack Obama used to talk of his Lincoln-style team of rivals. But it’s hard to imagine his cerebral Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner throwing down the gauntlet to a Cabinet colleague during the Great Recession in 2009.

Trump, being Trump, might welcome the friction, seeing in it a chance to play his warring lieutenants against one another to his advantage.

But there’s a graver reason why a cocktail hour brouhaha in Georgetown will send alarm bells around the world.

The alleged shouting match reveals there’s only one currency in MAGA world: uber loyalty to Trump. Bessent was apparently furious because he thought his colleague had been talking about him with Trump behind his back. The Treasury secretary has emerged as an impressive inside player in the bruising Washington game and knows that his capacity to do his job — calming the markets, shaping the president’s wildest instincts and stabilizing the global economy — requires Trump’s absolute confidence. Once Trump turns against someone, it’s a tough road back. If Bessent starts to sense he’s on the outs, investors might panic.

It’s obvious that the first duty of Trump’s officials is to cater to his self-image of greatness rather than to the public. Hence the fawning North Korea-style genuflections that Trump requires in Cabinet meetings.

But flattery exacts a price. Trump’s team must tell him what he wants to hear — not what he should hear. Such self-censoring is always dangerous for presidents, who live inside bubbles of deference even in normal times.

It’s even more hazardous under Trump, since the president is embarked on the riskiest, most unorthodox economic experiment in generations. His tariff wars have ripped up a global trading system that made the US the world’s mightiest economic power. Now, Trump wants to crush another cornerstone of US financial superiority: the independence of the Federal Reserve.

He’s not just pursuing another long-term obsession — scything interest rates. He could also get his hands on the Fed’s other levers, like regulating banks and bailouts, in a way that could profit him and his rich friends in the event of a major financial shock.

Pulte’s clash with Bessent, meanwhile, will only thicken intrigue about his growing behind-the-scenes role. He’s recently emerged as a key player since his agency has been unearthing alleged irregularities on mortgage forms filed by some of the president’s top targets, including Lisa Cook, whom Trump is trying to fire as a Fed governor.

As Trump’s team spars, Americans are getting really worried about the economy

Internecine feuding may be another distraction from what Americans care about most.

News of tensions inside Trump’s top team emerged days after a grim jobs report suggested that Trump’s outlandish economic approach is beginning to cause damage. The report, released on Friday, showed the economy added only 22,000 positions last month. The data showed the consumer goods sector is now suffering from rising prices brought on by tariffs, the volatile way they are being imposed and the resulting slowdown in hiring. The employment rates among Black Americans and young people, often harbingers, are worsening fast.

But Trump’s officials cannot break any of this down in public to avoid angering the president. A month after their boss fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, his top aides are still claiming that the numbers are off.

On recent TV talk shows, Bessent warned that August was the “noisiest” month for employment numbers. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett warned of “dissonance” in the data. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, chief cheerleader for Trump’s elusive golden age, said on CNBC: “Wait until a year from today. Wow, it will be amazing numbers.”

Here’s hoping they are right. Maybe Trump’s irregular approach will reap dividends with jobs returning home and a manufacturing boom. Perhaps lower interest rates will boost growth. And the US economy has previously made fools of those who’ve bet against its resilience.

But that would require almost everything most people know about the economy to be wrong.

There was a worrying moment on NBC’s “Meet The Press” on Sunday. Bessent made a claim that was hard to take at face value from such a serious figure. He refused to agree with what almost every credible economist believes — that tariffs are an effective tax on consumers. “No, I don’t,” Bessent said. He also claimed that investment banking behemoth Goldman Sachs, which calculated that most tariffs were being paid by the US consumer, was not a credible source. (Bessent has previously argued the idea of tariff-based inflation is “the dog that didn’t bark.”)

Any other answer would have busted his relationship with Trump and offered new ammunition to alleged adversaries inside the administration like Pulte.

But voters, a plurality of whom turned to Trump in the 2024 election in the hope that he’d alleviate the high anxiety of punishing prices for groceries and housing, are watching.

While Trump is bolstering his appeal to his base by threatening to send troops into Chicago and cranking up the pace of his mass deportation drive, most Americans want him to do something else — fix the economy. A CBS News poll published last week showed that just 36% of voters think the economy is good. Some 64% think prices have been going up in recent weeks and 56% think the economy is getting worse. In a new NBC News survey, Trump’s approval is weakening on vital economic issues. Only 39% approve of his handling of inflation and 41% back his handling of trade and tariffs. He’s down to his most loyal base on the economy and has pushed away independents and more moderate crossover voters who helped send him back to the White House.

Cardiff Garcia, the editorial director of the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan public policy organization, told CNN’s Audie Cornish on Monday that workers were becoming more pessimistic about the economy and Trump’s tariff strategy.

“They’re most worried about the same things that they actually were worried about during the Biden administration, which is the cost of basic goods and services and the cost of housing. They really wish that the administration and the Congress would focus on that instead,” he said. “Tariffs actually ranked dead last as what workers think that the president should be prioritizing right now.”

The economy is on a knife’s edge. The data is turning bad. And two top members of the president’s team almost came to blows.

No wonder the country is worried.

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