President Donald J. Trump displays his signature after signing an Executive Order on Strengthening the Child Welfare System for America’s Children Wednesday, June 24, 2020, in the Oval Office of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks)
In an interview following his selection as nominee for the position of Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent stressed that his priorities in the coming four years would be lowering taxes, enacting tariffs, cutting spending, and maintaining the dollar’s reserve currency status. The Wall Street Journal reports:
In his first interview following his selection, Bessent said his policy priority will be to deliver on Trump’s various tax-cut pledges. Those include making his first-term cuts permanent, and eliminating taxes on tips, social-security benefits and overtime pay.
Enacting tariffs and cutting spending will also be a focus, he said, as will be “maintaining the status of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.”
Bessent became one of Trump’s closest advisers by adding depth to his economic proposals and defending his plans for more-activist trade policies. He has argued that the president-elect’s plans to extend tax cuts and deregulate parts of the U.S. economy would create an “economic lollapalooza.”
Trump selected him from several candidates jockeying for the job partly because he trusted him to execute the administration’s policies more than the other contenders, The Wall Street Journal has reported. The decision came after Elon Musk criticized Bessent as a “business-as-usual choice” while lobbying for Cantor Fitzgerald Chief Executive Howard Lutnick instead. (Trump later nominated Lutnick to lead the Commerce Department.)
Many on Wall Street, including hedge-fund managers Daniel Loeb and Bill Ackman, applauded the selection of Bessent. Investor Kyle Bass said on the social-media platform X that Bessent was “the single best choice.”
People who have worked with Bessent describe him as reserved and professorial. He once taught economic history at Yale University, his alma mater, and, as an investor, he would often research forgotten financial analogues to inform his views on current events.
“We are going to have to have some kind of a grand global economic reordering,” Bessent said at a June event. “I’d like to be a part of it. I’ve studied this.”
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