Donald Trump appointed the eminent investor Scott Bessent to assume the post of Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, as confirmed by a statement published in Truth Social.
Bessent is the founder of macro-investment firm Key Square GroupDuring the last election campaign, he hosted a fundraising event for the Republican in South Carolina and Trump has described him in the past as “one of the brightest minds on Wall Street.”
The newspaper Washington Post He noted that people close to Trump’s transition team point out that the financier caught their attention in part because of his negative predictions about the impact of a possible Democratic victory in the Nov. 5 election.
If his nomination is validated by the Senate, Bessent will play a crucial role in overseeing a vast portfolio that will cover the entire territory. international trade, taxes, financial regulation and American sanctions.
In this sense, Bessent advocated for tax reform and deregulation, particularly for stimulate more bank lending and energy production, as noted in a recent opinion piece he wrote for The Wall Street Journal.
The market’s recovery after Trump’s election victory, he wrote, reflects investors’ “expectations for higher growth, lower volatility and inflation, and revitalized economy for all Americans.”
As the 79th Treasury Secretary, he will essentially be America’s top economic official, responsible for keeping the world’s largest economy plumbing, collecting taxes and paying the nation’s bills to manage the Treasury debt market.
Political change
He will also inherit the role assumed by Janet Yellen, leading the Group of Seven wealthy democracies to provide tens of billions of dollars in economic support for Ukraine in its war with Russia and toughen sanctions against Moscow. This work may not be a priority, given Trump’s desire to withdraw U.S. financial support for Ukraine.
Another area where Bessent will likely differ from Yellen is her emphasis on climate change, from her mandate that development banks expand clean energy lending to integrating climate risks into regulations financial.
Trump, a climate change skeptic, has promised to increase U.S. energy production based on fossil fuels and end clean energy subsidies of the Biden Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
The Treasury Secretary is also the administration’s closest point of contact with the Federal Reserve. Yellen with Biden and Steven Mnuchin with Trump met weekly with Fed Chairman Jerome Powell.
However, Bessent raised the idea of creating a shadow presidency of the Fed. This would involve appointing a presumptive successor to Powell to the Fed Board as soon as possible, to whom he would then provide his own policy guidance. Powell’s term as Fed chair expires in May 2026, and presidents rarely wait until the end of their term to name a successor.
Personal life
Bessent, who studied at Yale, was George Soros’ wealth manager but left the investor and philanthropist’s business to start his own fund.
A native of South Carolina, he is married to former New York prosecutor John Freeman, with whom he has two children. The CBS News channel highlighted this Friday that it would be the first openly gay Republican cabinet member.
The Treasury position is the most important of the positions still vacant in the future Trump administration, which has sparked controversy for having placed, among others, the anti-vaccine Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the head of Health and a former presenter of Fox investigated in the past for sexual abuse, Pete Hegseth, at the Defense.
