(Bloomberg) -- President-elect Donald Trump said he is nominating Scott Bessent, who runs macro hedge fund Key Square Group, as the next US Treasury secretary, enlisting a key adviser to manage the sweeping economic agenda he has vowed to enact in a second term.
“Scott has long been a strong advocate of the America First Agenda,” Trump said in a statement Friday. “On the eve of our Great Country’s 250th Anniversary, he will help me usher in a new Golden Age for the United States, as we fortify our position as the World’s leading Economy.”
Bessent, 62, emerged as the pick after an extended search for a Treasury chief that saw Trump consider multiple candidates — and Wall Street executives and business leaders vie to influence the president-elect’s decision. Allies believed that Trump sought a candidate that would be favored both by Wall Street as well as an electoral base eager for him to implement sweeping tariffs, embrace cryptocurrencies and crack down on undocumented migration.
Bessent beat out other prominent contenders including Apollo Global Management Inc. executive Marc Rowan, former Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh and Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty as well as Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnick, who was named to lead the Commerce Department.
If confirmed by the US Senate, Bessent would be the first openly gay Treasury chief, and one of the wealthiest in modern times. Bessent has said that he has always wanted to serve his country, but in the 1980s his sexual orientation prevented him from going to the US Naval Academy, and after graduating from Yale University, from joining the State Department.
He joins an economic team beginning to take shape just weeks after Trump won a second presidential term. Trump announced that his former budget director, Russ Vought, would be returning to the same role in a statement to his social media platform later Friday.
“He did an excellent job serving in this role in my First Term - We cut four Regulations for every new Regulation, and it was a Great Success!” Trump said.
Vought, a key architect of Project 2025, the controversial Heritage Foundation policy document released during the campaign, will work alongside Bessent to implement Trump’s economic agenda.
Political Thickets
As the nation’s highest ranking economic policymaker, Bessent will have to wade through political thickets in Washington, spearhead international economic diplomacy and bring Wall Street know-how to crisis situations. He will also be closely watched by investors and financial institutions, who are looking for predictability and stability.
He has been a proponent of realigning US currency policy, but has stopped short of supporting an overt strategy of depreciating the dollar. During Trump’s first term, the then-president called out dollar appreciation for being harmful to US manufacturers and even considered government intervention to manage the greenback’s value.
Bessent has acknowledged that while a weaker dollar would be good for some parts of the economy, some of Trump’s proposals would drive up its value.
He has criticized President Joe Biden’s administration for its management of federal debt financing, and has talked about expanding its “friendshoring” policy to create a tiered system among trade partners.
At Treasury, Bessent is expected to advise Trump on candidates to chair the Federal Reserve when that job opens up in May 2026. Earlier this year, he talked about the idea of nominating a new Fed chair well in advance of the expiration of current chair Jerome Powell’s term. Financial markets would turn their attention to that shadow Fed chair instead of Powell, Bessent has said.
He has said the Fed was too slow to respond to rising inflation in 2021, and criticized the US central bank for its large interest-rate cut in September.
Bessent spent part of his career managing money for billionaire George Soros. He lived in London and was part of the team, under Stan Druckenmiller, that made $1 billion in 1992 shorting the pound — a wager that helped force the currency out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, and made Soros famous as the man who broke the Bank of England.
He would be the second Treasury secretary, after Steven Mnuchin, who has worked for groups with close ties to Soros.
Soros’ family office made about $10 billion in profit under Bessent as investment chief, or about 13% annualized. Since then, he’s run Key Square, which started with a $2 billion investment from Soros — funds he later returned as other investors came in.
“I think he’ll be outstanding,” said Druckenmiller. “Having worked for me and George for all those years, he’s been exposed to everything a Treasury secretary has to deal with. He has a deep knowledge of markets and he’s also an intellectual who has the chops to work with academic policymakers. It’s a rare combination.”
Bessent will be returning his hedge fund clients’ capital as soon as possible after Dec. 1, according to a person familiar with his plans. Federal rules require cabinet members to develop plans to remove their potential conflicts of interest, and then follow through on them, usually within as little as 90 days.
Here’s a look at some key areas of responsibility for the role of Treasury Secretary:
Oversight, Taxes
Bessent is expected to play a key role in pushing for a renewal of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts through Congress, many of which are set to expire at the end of 2025.
The Treasury chief could be charged with liaising with Republicans in Congress to expand the scope of the tax bill to include some of Trump’s campaign-trail tax promises, including a 15% corporate rate and exempting tipped wages from taxation.
The Treasury Secretary is also charged with running the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a panel set up after the financial crisis. Under outgoing Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, FSOC looked at the issue of climate change, triggering criticism from Republicans who have been wary of any requirement for banks to incorporate climate in their lending or capital decisions.
FSOC under Yellen also recommended stronger oversight of stablecoins, which the Fed has likened to bank deposits and money market funds — and which are subject to much more regulation. Trump’s advocacy of the crypto space on the campaign trail likely will put the new Treasury chief’s stance under the spotlight.
Economic Diplomacy
Peppered through the year are meetings of the finance chiefs of the Group of Seven, G-20 and other international organizations, which the Treasury secretary typically attends as the chief US representative.
The Treasury Department implements US sanctions on foreign countries, companies and individuals, which have soared in number over the past several years. Yellen helped to lead efforts at the G-7 to isolate Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and to step up financial assistance for Kyiv.
The secretary also has often served as point person on engagement with China. The Treasury chief tends to be a cautionary voice when it comes to proposals aimed at America’s biggest strategic rival. Mnuchin, Trump’s Treasury head in his first term, was seen as playing that role when tensions escalated in 2018 and 2019.
Debt Management
In charge of the nation’s purse strings, Bessent will have to deal with a costly, and ballooning, debt load. The federal budget deficit crept up to 6.4% of GDP in fiscal 2024, historically high for a time of economic expansion and full employment. A key driver has been soaring interest costs, in the wake of Fed rate hikes in 2022 and 2023.
“No one has been more terrified about this debt stack and the coming refinance we’ve got to do,” Bessent said on a recent War Room podcast with longtime Trump adviser Stephen Bannon. What can “stabilize the bond market” is a fiscal package that reins in spending, he said.
Bessent has also complained about Treasury’s debt financing strategy, claiming that Yellen was trying to juice the economy and help her boss ahead of the November election — a charge she rejected.
Debt managers may need to be active in managing the Treasury’s liquidity, because the federal debt ceiling is scheduled to kick back in at the start of January. That bars the department from issuing new debt, and triggers an oft-deployed sequence of maneuvers to prevent the US government from running out of cash or, worse, defaulting on its debt — an event that could have catastrophic repercussions.
Glen Capelo, who spent more than three decades on Wall Street bond-trading desks and is now a managing director at Mischler Financial Group, called Bessent a “fiscal hawk.”
“He definitely will be positive overall for the economy and the markets. He wants to rein in spending. Bessent wants to get the Secretary of the Treasury back in line with the markets – because he does believe Janet Yellen has twisted the issuance around a bit,” Capelo said.
--With assistance from Maria Luiza Rabello, Liz Capo McCormick, Katherine Burton and Romy Varghese.
(Updates to add details about Bessent’s divestiture plan in 19th paragraph)
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