President-elect Donald Trump on Friday announced hedge fund billionaire Scott Bessent as his pick for U.S. Treasury secretary, choosing a former executive with Soros Fund Management who in recent years has been a vocal supporter of the former president’s policies, from tariffs to spending cuts.
If confirmed, Bessent would follow Janet Yellen, a labor economist who was the first woman to lead both the Federal Reserve and Treasury, in running the department that manages the nation’s finances as well as its tax agency, the Internal Revenue Service.
Bessent, who had provided economic advice to the Trump campaign, has had a decades-long career in finance. He analyzed macroeconomic and geopolitical risks while working at the Soros Fund, where he served as chief investment officer, as well as at other hedge funds.
Perhaps more importantly in helping him gain Trump’s backing, Bessent countered other economic experts during the presidential campaign, arguing that they were wrong about the impact of the former president’s policies. In a recent Fox News opinion piece, he asserted that tariffs aren’t inflationary, rejecting the views of 16 Nobel Prize-winning economists that Trump’s plans to impose broad tariffs could reignite price increases.
“Critics of tariffs argue that they will increase the prices Americans pay for imported goods,” Bessent wrote for Fox News. “But the facts argue against this. President Trump’s first-term tariffs did not raise the prices of the affected goods, despite predictions back then that the tariffs would prove inflationary.”
Here’s what to know about Scott Bessent.
What is Bessent’s educational and work history?
Bessent, a Yale graduate, initially sought to become a journalist, but when he didn’t get the post as editor of the Yale Daily News, he changed direction. Bessent secured an internship with money manager Jim Rogers, George Soros’ first partner and co-founder of the Quantum Fund, he told his university’s alumni magazine.
“And he even offered — which was key for me — a place to stay on the office sofa,” Bessent told the publication.
Bessent is the CEO and Chief Investment Officer of New York-based hedge fund Key Square Capital Management, according to S&P Capital IQ. He has also taught at Yale University, offering classes on economic booms and busts in the 20th century and the history of hedge funds.
What are Bessent’s political and economic views?
In an October opinion piece in The Economist, Bessent singled out globalization as sparking growing inequality in the U.S., which has led to widening social and economic disparities.
“Western middle- and working-class populations are growing increasingly wary of globalization,” he wrote. “The only way to preserve the benefits of the international trading system is to question some of its mistaken assumptions and update them for the current moment.”
Among those updates: tariffs, with Bessent arguing in his Fox News piece that taxes on goods imported into the U.S. can “increase revenue to the Treasury, encourage businesses to restore production and reduce our reliance on industrial production from strategic rivals.”
Bessent has advised Trump to create a “3-3-3” policy, which includes cutting the budget deficit to 3% of GDP by 2028, as well as pushing GDP growth to 3% via deregulation and pumping out an extra 3 million barrels of oil each day, according to the Wall Street Journal.
What about Bessent’s ties with Soros?
The relationship between a one-time Soros protégé and a Republican leader like Trump may seem unusual, given that the billionaire philanthropist is viewed negatively by many conservatives.
But Trump views Bessent’s experience working for Soros as a positive, according to the Journal, which noted that the former president is impressed with the legendary investor’s wealth.
While at Soros Fund Management, Bessent bet against the yen, generating almost $1 billion over a three-month period, the Journal noted.
What about Bessent’s personal life?
Bessent now lives in his home state of South Carolina with his husband, former New York City prosecutor John Freeman, with whom he has two children.
“If you had told me in 1984, when we graduated [from Yale], and people were dying of AIDS, that 30 years later I’d be legally married and we would have two children via surrogacy, I wouldn’t have believed you,” Bessent told the Yale alumni magazine in 2015.
Politics also runs in his family, as former Rep. John Jenrette was his uncle and is also known for serving a prison sentence for his role in 1980s Abscam scandal, South Carolina’s Post and Courier reported.
