- Scott Besant is a prominent investor.
- Position matters on economic and organizational impact.
- This comes after days of deliberations conducted by President-elect Trump.
President-elect Donald Trump said on Friday that he will nominate prominent investor Scott Bessent as US Treasury Secretary, ending days of volatility that saw prominent candidates compete for a Cabinet position with broad influence over economic, regulatory and international affairs.
Wall Street has been closely watching who Trump will choose, especially in light of his plans to reshape global trade through tariffs and expanding the range of tax cuts passed during his first term.
The selection of Besant, 62, who has spent his career in finance, gives Wall Street a supporter of tax reform and deregulation. Some strategists said his nomination was a relief because he understands markets, and his appointment could reduce the chance of severe tariffs.
The announcement — the most high-profile of a series of appointments Trump made Friday night — caps a week in which Wall Street’s top figures’ chances of getting the job fluctuated on a daily basis.
Other names taken into consideration include Apollo Global Management CEO Mark Rowan and former Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh. Investor John Paulson was also a front-runner, but withdrew, while Wall Street veteran Howard Lutnick, another contender, was named head of the Commerce Department.
The selection came after days of deliberations by Trump as he sorted through a shifting slate of nominees. Sources said Bescent spent day after day at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida offering economic advice, which may have helped his proximity to the president-elect win.
“Scott is widely respected as one of the world’s leading international investors, geopolitical strategists, and economics,” Trump said in announcing the nomination in a statement posted on the Truth Social website.
Finance profession to treasury
Besant, from South Carolina, spent his career in finance, working for macro investing billionaire George Soros and famous short-seller Jim Chanos, in addition to managing his own hedge fund.
As a money manager, he bet big on a Trump win after spotting what he called a market anomaly — where political and market analysts were very negative about what a Trump win would mean.
Bessent, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has called for tax reform and deregulation, especially to stimulate more bank lending and energy production, as noted in a recent op-ed for the Journal Wall Street magazine.
He wrote that the market’s rally after Trump’s election win signals investors’ expectations for “higher growth, lower volatility and inflation, and a revitalized economy for all Americans.”
“Besent was in favor of less aggressive tariffs,” said Ryan Sweet of Oxford Economics, adding that his choice makes the steep tariffs Trump proposed during the campaign less likely.
Besent follows other prominent financial figures who have held the position, including former Goldman Sachs executives Robert Rubin and Hank Paulson and Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s first Treasury secretary. Janet Yellen, the current Secretary and the first woman to hold the position, previously chaired the Federal Reserve and the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
Economics midfielder
As Treasury Secretary, Bescent will be the highest-ranking economic official in the United States and will be responsible for maintaining the world’s largest economy, from collecting taxes and paying the country’s bills to managing the $28.6 trillion Treasury debt market and overseeing financial regulation, including… Dealing with and preventing market crises.
The Treasury chief also manages U.S. financial sanctions policy, has influence over the U.S.-led International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other international financial institutions, and manages national security checks on foreign investments in the United States.
Picent will face challenges, including safely managing the federal deficit that is expected to grow by about $8 trillion over a decade due to Trump’s plans to extend the tax cuts expiring next year and add generous new breaks, including ending taxes on Social Security income.
Without offsetting revenues, this new debt will add to an already unsustainable fiscal trajectory expected to swell U.S. debt by $22 trillion through 2033.
Managing debt of this size without market indigestion will be a challenge, although Besant said Trump’s agenda would unleash stronger economic growth that would raise revenues and boost market confidence, opens a new tab.
Besant will also inherit the role Yellen gave leading the Group of Seven rich democracies in providing tens of billions of dollars in economic support to Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion and tightening sanctions on Moscow. But it is unclear whether he will continue to do so, given Trump’s desire to quickly end the war and withdraw US financial support for Ukraine.
Another area where Besant is likely to differ from Yellen is her focus on climate change, from her mandate for development banks to expand clean energy lending to integrating climate risk into financial regulations and managing hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy tax credits.
Trump, a climate change skeptic, pledged to increase US fossil fuel energy production and end clean energy subsidies in President Joe Biden’s 2022 inflation-reducing bill.
The Treasury Secretary is also the administration’s closest contact with the Federal Reserve. Yellen under Biden and Mnuchin under Trump usually met weekly with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, often over breakfast or lunch.
Besant floated the idea of creating a “shadow” chair for the Federal Reserve. This would necessitate nominating a putative successor to Powell to the Fed as soon as possible, who would then provide his own policy guidance, so that, as Bessent told Barron’s last month, “nobody’s really going to care what Jerome Powell has to say anymore.” “
Besant has since said he no longer believes the shadow chair idea is worth pursuing Wall Street Journal I mentioned.
Powell’s term as Fed Chairman ends in May 2026.
Soap opera
Bessent, along with John Paulson, had been early front-runners for the position earlier in the year according to a Reuters report at the time, and appeared to be in first place a week after Election Day, on November 12, when Paulson dropped out of the race, citing “Complex financial obligations.”
However, there were many ups and downs in the race for first place.
On November 13, banker Howard Lutnick, who was leading a transition team to vet staff and draft policy, emerged as a leading contender. However, Lutnick was excluded from the race after Trump nominated him to lead his trade and tariff strategy as head of the Commerce Department.
Sources familiar with the transition process said at the time that the pool of candidates then expanded when Rowan and former Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh were under consideration, in addition to Republican US Senator Bill Hagerty.