President-elect Donald Trump will name hedge fund mogul Scott Bessent as the next treasury secretary, four sources told The Post, ending a rough-and-tumble race that saw fierce jockeying between power players across Wall Street.
Bessent “got a thumbs up” late Thursday during a meeting with Trump at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., one source close to the situation told The Post.
Last-minute media reports have floated many candidates. Late Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that financier Kevin Warsh had met with Trump on Wednesday about the delivery of the Treasury – and possibly replacing Jerome Powell as Fed chairman when his term expires in 2026.
Trump also met about the Treasury’s role with Marc Rowan, the billionaire boss of buyout firm Apollo Global Management, at Mar-a-Lago earlier this week.
Bessent, the 62-year-old founder of Key Square Group, has repeatedly supported the president-elect’s pro-tariff stance in a series of op-eds and media appearances over the past year.
“If you want to bring a genius to a job that is loyal to the president, Scott is the right guy,” one source close to the situation told The Post.
One faction of Trump World has been pushing Bessent for weeks, trying to beat out Howard Lutnick – CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and chairman of Trump’s transition team – who is reportedly in a “knife fight” for the role he wants.
One insider, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Lutnick, who was a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, was eventually given the Commerce Secretary post “to calm down.”
After Lutnick dropped out of the Treasury race, sources said Trump continued to conduct interviews to see his options. Bessent and Rowan were both seen at the private members’ club on Wednesday.
However, a source briefed on Rowan’s interview said the 62-year-old Rowan is “an anti-tariff person and a non-starter for the president.”
Another staunch Trump loyalist and major donor, billionaire hedge fund boss John Paulson, ruled himself out of the race just one week after the election.
A native of South Carolina, Bessent previously served as chief investment officer for George Soros and was instrumental in the Hungarians’ “Black Wednesday” trade in 1992.
Bet against the British pound “broke the Bank of England”, raking in the eye-watering $1 billion payday for Soros who cemented his reputation as a titan of global finance.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Bessent said Trump’s second term as president would bring “a revitalized economy for all Americans.”
He attacked the Biden-Harris administration for presiding over four years of “reckless spending” that has seen Mr. Sam’s debt pile up to $35 trillion this year.
“The mismanagement of the Biden administration has created serious challenges that Mr. Trump must overcome,” Bessent wrote on November 10.
He said the 78-year-old “has a mandate to re-privatize the US economy through deregulation and tax reform to stimulate the supply-side growth he delivered in his first term.”
A large portion of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts expire next year, giving Bessent a chance to help shape fiscal policy under the incoming commander-in-chief.
The president-elect has tapped Tesla titan Elon Musk and GOP firebrand Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency and tighten the federal government’s purse strings.
Diana Glebova contributed reporting.
