President-elect Donald Trump was declare hedge fund billionaire Scott Bessent is the choice for US 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 rate to cut spending.
If confirmed, Bessent will follow Janet Yellen, the labor economist who became the first woman to lead the Federal Reserve and Treasury. department which manages the state’s finances as well as the tax agency, the Internal Revenue Service.
Bessent, who has 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 was chief investment officer, as well as at other hedge funds.
Perhaps it is more important to help them get it Trump’s supportBessent opposed other economists 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 insisted that rates are not inflationary, denying them views of 16 Nobel Prize winning economists that Trump’s plans to impose big tariffs can reignite price increases.
“Critics of the tariffs argue that they will increase the prices Americans pay for imported goods,” Bessent wrote for Fox News. “But the facts contradict this. President Trump’s first-term tariffs did not raise the prices of the affected goods, despite predictions that the tariffs would prove inflationary.”
Here’s what you need to know about Scott Bessent.
What is Bessent’s educational and work history?
Bessent, a Yale graduate, originally wanted to be a journalist, but when he didn’t get a job as editor of the Yale Daily News, he changed direction. Bessent got an internship with money manager Jim Rogers, the first partner of George Soros and co-founder of the Quantum Fund, he told the university’s alumni magazine.
“And they even offered — which was key for me — a place to stay on the office sofa,” Bessent told the publication.
Bessent is 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 the economic booms and busts of 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 called globalization a cause of inequality in the US, leading to widening social and economic disparities.
“Middle-class and working-class populations in the West are increasingly wary of globalization,” he wrote. “The only way to preserve the benefits of the international trading system is to question some wrong assumptions and update them for the present moment.”
Among the updates: tariffs, with Bessent arguing in a Fox News piece that taxes on goods imported into the US can “increase revenue to the Treasury, encourage businesses to restore production and reduce our dependence on industrial production from strategic competitors.”
Bessent has advised Trump to create a “3-3-3” policy, which includes reducing the budget deficit to 3% of GDP by 2028, as well as pushing GDP growth to 3% through deregulation and releasing an additional 3 million barrels of oil. oil per day, according to the Wall Street Journal.
What is Bessent’s relationship with Soros?
The relationship between Soros’ one-time protégé and Republican leaders like Trump may seem unusual, given that the billionaire philanthropist is viewed negatively by many conservatives.
But Trump saw Bessent’s experience working for Soros as a positive one, according to the Journal, which noted that the former president was impressed by the legendary investor’s wealth.
While at Soros Fund Management, Bessent traded against the yen, earning nearly $1 billion in three months, the Journal noted.
What about Bessent’s personal life?
Bessent currently lives in her home state of South Carolina with her husband, former New York City prosecutor John Freeman, with whom she 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 would be legally married and we would have two children through surrogacy, I would not have believed you. ,” Bessent told Yale alumni magazine in 2015.
Politics also runs in the family, as former Rep. John Jenrette is his uncle and is also known for serving a prison sentence for his role in the Abscam scandal in the 1980s, South Carolina’s Post and Courier reported.
