Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday the White House is determined to bring down interest rates, and investors are listening, as the market’s expectations of rate cuts swell, but the root of what’s driving the recently renewed rate cut hopes is not so rosy as the prospect of a shrinking economy as President Donald Trump’s tariffs take hold.

-2.8%. That’s how much the U.S. economy is expected to shrink by in 2025’s first quarter, according to the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow indicator tracking how existing economic data will feed into gross domestic product. That’d be the worst economic growth since 2020’s second quarter, which was impacted by COVID-19 shutdowns.

The Fed typically most frequently cuts rates to stimulate the economy, as lower borrowing costs convince more households and businesses to take cheaper debt and inject money back into the economy. Though the recent bump in rate cut hopes largely follows growing slowdown fears as Trump implements his wide-sweeping tariffs, there’s also a far more sanguine catalyst for the shift, as Bessent leads the administration’s charge to restore confidence in the federal government’s financial health. To that end, yields for 10-year U.S. Treasury notes have declined by about 40 basis points over the last four weeks to a three-month low of about 4.1%, as investors’ appetite for U.S. debt has increased (lower yields indicate bonds became more valuable). The Fed began cutting rates from their two-decade high in September, before opting to put a hold on its cuts as inflation got stuck above policymakers’ 2% goal.

“Wall Street can continue to do fine but we have a focus on small business and the consumers,” Bessent told Fox News. “So we are going to rebalance the economy.” Wall Street has struggled over the last two weeks, as the S&P 500 index has declined about 5%.