USA: Trump nominates prominent investor Scott Bessent as Treasury secretary
US President-elect Donald Trump nominated on Friday the prominent investor Scott Bessent as U.S. Treasury secretary, a position that holds significant influence over economic, regulatory, and international affairs.
Wall Street has been closely watching who Trump would choose, particularly given his plans to reshape global trade through tariffs and potentially expand the tax cuts enacted during his first term.
The Republican president-elect not only sought someone who aligned with his views but also an official capable of executing his economic vision. With a Yale University education and a background at Soros Fund Management before founding his own funds, Bessent, 62, will face the challenge of managing a delicate balancing act.
Trump expects him to help reset the global trade order, enable trillions of dollars in tax cuts, ensure inflation stays in check, manage a ballooning national debt, and keep the financial markets confident.
“Scott will support my policies that will drive U.S. competitiveness, stop unfair trade imbalances, and work to create an economy that places growth at the forefront, especially through our coming world energy dominance,” Trump said in a statement.
Trump’s choice, however, went against the opinion of billionaire Elon Musk, who is co-leading Trump’s advisory panel known as the “Department of Government Efficiency” initiative. The head of Tesla and SpaceX posted on his social media site X before Trump’s selection that Bessent would be “a business-as-usual choice.”
Other names that had been considered included Apollo Global Management Chief Executive Marc Rowan and former Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh. Investor John Paulson had also been a leading candidate, but dropped out, while Wall Street veteran Howard Lutnick, another contender, was appointed as head of the Commerce Department.
According to sources, Bessent spent day after day at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida providing economic advice, a proximity to the president-elect that may have helped him prevail.
The economist Olivier Blanchard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, this week laid out the contradictions of “Trumponomics,” adding that deficit-funded tax cuts and tariff hikes could be inflationary.
“The U.S. should be thinking about reducing the deficit, quite apart from Trump,” Blanchard said in a webcast. “Trump is probably going to make it worse.”
The Treasury Secretary may face the added challenge of pressuring Fed Chair Jerome Powell to yield to Trump’s demands.
“The risk of a conflict between the Trump administration and the Fed is very high,” Blanchard added, as the Fed would likely seek to slow growth to prevent inflation from exacerbating.
