Donald Trump has nominated Scott Bessent, a longtime hedge-fund investor who taught at Yale University for several years, to be his treasury secretary, a statement from Trump confirmed on Friday. The job is one of the most powerful in Washington, with huge influence over America’s gigantic economy and financial markets.
The move is the latest nomination as the president-elect starts to pull together the administration for his second term in the White House. The process so far has been marked largely by a focus more on personal and political loyalty to Trump than expertise and experience.
In economics, one of the main focuses and controversies of the treasury role will be to deal with Trump’s high-profile and oft-repeated promises to pursue a policy of aggressive new US tariffs in foreign trade – something that is widely feared by many other countries across the globe.
Trump is set to return to Washington as president after defeating Kamala Harris in a stunning election win earlier this month that has sent shock waves across the US and the world.
Wall Street has been closely watching who Trump will pick, especially given his plans to remake global trade through tariffs.
Bessent has advocated for tax reform and deregulation, particularly to spur more bank lending and energy production, as noted in a recent opinion piece he wrote for the Wall Street Journal.
The market’s surge after Trump’s election victory, he wrote, signaled investor “expectations of higher growth, lower volatility and inflation, and a revitalized economy for all Americans”.
Bessent follows other financial luminaries who have taken the job, including the former Goldman Sachs executives Robert Rubin, Hank Paulson and Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s first treasury chief. Janet Yellen, the current secretary and first woman in the job, previously chaired the Federal Reserve and White House council of economic advisers.
Reuters contributed to this report
