Appearing on Fox News Sunday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin insisted that COVID-19 fears have not impacted overall consumer spending, boasting that “business is booming” as panicked Americans are driving sales up amid the coronavirus outbreak.
During the interview, host Chris Wallace pointed out that Americans are concerned about their retirement savings after losses in the stock market.
“According to one estimate, the market has lost almost $8 trillion dollars in value,” Wallace noted. “How much further are the markets going to drop?”
“I can’t predict where the market is this week,” Mnuchin replied. “But what I can tell you is people who bought stock after the crash in ’87, people who bought stocks after the financial crisis did really well.”
“But you talk about people who bought after the crash,” Wallace pressed. “But when is after the crash?”
“We can’t ever predict the bottom of the market or the top of the market,” Mnuchin said. “There’s no question there are businesses that will be severely impacted. We are focused on helping those businesses that need liquidity.”
“There are some businesses that are booming. I mean, you look at the stores and the people that are buying certain consumer products,” the Treasury secretary said before adding: “Almost corresponding is an increase in purchases of food pharmacy goods and supplies.”
Watch the video below from Fox News Sunday.
