The White House launched an official TikTok account on Tuesday, taking advantage of its more than 150 million U.S. users to spread the messages of President Donald Trump.

Trump has a soft spot for the popular app, crediting it with helping him gain support among young voters when he defeated Democrat Kamala Harris in the November 2024 presidential election.

Past intelligence assessments have said the short video app’s owners are beholden to the Chinese government and that it could be used to influence Americans.

“The Trump administration is committed to communicating the historic successes President Trump has delivered to the American people with as many audiences and platforms as possible,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said as the site went live.

“President Trump’s message dominated TikTok during his presidential campaign, and we’re excited to build upon those successes and communicate in a way no other administration has before,” she said.

The account, @whitehouse, began operation on Tuesday evening, with the aim of communicating the president’s policies, a White House official said.

(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Colleen Jenkins, Leslie Adler, Rod Nickel)

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he expects a big jump in revenues from sweeping tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump, and said the money would be used first to start paying down the federal debt, not to give rebate checks to Americans.

Bessent, speaking in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” said he expected to substantially revise upward his earlier estimate of $300 billion in revenues from the tariffs, but declined to be more specific.

Bessent said he had not spoken with Trump about the idea of using funds from the tariffs to create a dividend for Americans, but stressed that both of them were “laser-focused” on paying down the debt.

“I’ve been saying that tariff revenue could be $300 billion this year. I’m going to have to revise that up substantially,” Bessent said. “We’re going to bring down the deficit to GDP. We’ll start paying down the debt, and then at that point that can be used as an offset to the American people.”

The U.S. economy could return to the “good, low-inflationary growth” of the 1990s, Bessent said, but he blamed higher interest rates for problems plaguing some pockets of the economy, singling out housing and lower-income households with high credit card debt.

End of Summer Sale – Get 40% off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships

A cut in the Federal Reserve’s key interest rate – which Trump has continually pressed for – could help facilitate a boom or pickup in home building, which would help keep prices down in one to two years, he said.

The U.S. Census Bureau on Tuesday reported a small increase in groundbreaking for single-family homes and permits for future construction in July, even as high mortgage rates and economic uncertainty continued to hamper home purchases.

Trump’s wide-ranging import tariffs have kept the Federal Reserve from lowering interest rates this year, with most central bank policymakers wary of easing borrowing costs until they have more confidence the levies will not rekindle inflation, which has yet to return to the Fed’s 2% target.

Recent indications of softening in the job market, however, have largely convinced investors that the Fed will cut rates by a quarter of a percentage point when it meets in mid-September. That expectation has helped bring down mortgage rates in recent weeks.

Bessent has previously said a 50-basis-point cut in rates was warranted.

(Reporting by Andrea ShalalEditing by Mark Potter and Leslie Adler)