Bessent Suggests Moving to a Red State to Beat Inflation

During a Meet the Press appearance in November 2025, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the best way for Americans to reduce their personal inflation rate was to "move from a blue state to a red state," citing an unpublished claim that blue-state inflation ran about half a percentage point higher due to regulatory differences and energy costs.

The Council of Economic Advisers did not publish the state-by-state analysis Bessent referenced, and economists, including Northwestern's Robert Gordon, called the advice impractical and the underlying inflation gap trivial compared to the cost of relocating a household, job, and family.

The comment was widely mocked as tone-deaf, treating a national economic problem as a matter of individual choice rather than acknowledging that food, energy, insurance, and housing costs are driven by nationwide and global factors largely outside any state's control.