Who will Trump choose for the Treasury? What to know about the candidates

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President-elect Donald Trump has rolled out his picks for his next Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Justice, but he has yet to announce one of the most critical Cabinet roles: Treasury Secretary.

The candidate Trump chooses will assume a high-level Cabinet position tasked with advising the president on matters related to financial, economic and tax policy. They must be confirmed by the Senate before they can assume the central position.

Trump’s 2024 re-election campaign centered on lowering prices and making other economic promises to the American people. The president-elect has called himself “Tariff Man” and said he plans to impose tariffs of up to 20% on all imported goods and additional tariffs of 60% to 100% on goods from China.

The idea is to drive up the price of imports to make American-made products more attractive. Trump’s plans have been heralded by some domestic manufacturers who compete against low-cost goods from other countries, but economists warn that tariffs could be a double-edged sword by driving up inflation and interest rates.

Many of these economists have warned that tariffs could hurt the economy by raising costs and lowering output. It also opens the possibility for trading partners to retaliate with their own tariffs.

But most of Trump’s Treasury secretary candidates have either been longtime supporters of tariffs or said they support them since the election.

Here are some of the buzz-making candidates:

Scott Bessent

Scott Bessent, 62, is the CEO of Key Square Capital Management, a Connecticut-based firm hedge fund. Before that, he was chief investment officer of Soros Fund Management, founded by George Soros, a longtime supporter of progressive and liberal political causes.

Bessent, one of Trump’s biggest fundraisers, is a champion of the president-elect’s economic policies of deregulation, increased domestic energy production and tax cuts.

On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly said he would push to expand drilling and further increase already record oil and gas production and lower corporate tax rates. He also tapped Tesla owner Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new initiative called the Department of Government Efficiency.

In a recent Fox News columnBessent offered full-throated support for tariffs, arguing that the tools “can increase revenue for the Treasury, encourage companies to restore production and reduce our dependence on industrial production from strategic rivals.”

The hedge fund manager has been known to cross party lines. He hosted a fundraiser for then-Vice President Al Gore when he ran for president in 2000.

Bessent, who has lived in New York, now lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with her husband John Freeman, a former New York prosecutor. The couple has two children.

Howard Lutnick

Howard Lutnick, 63, is a Wall Street billionaire and a top Trump ally. He has already worked with Trump transition team co-chair Linda McMahon to help the incoming president prepare to fill about 4,000 policy positions in the federal government.

A longtime friend of Trump, Lutnick has said he agrees with the president-elect’s policies on immigration, cryptocurrency and tariffs on imported goods.

Cracking down on immigration was at the heart of Trump’s re-election bid. Trump also embraced digital assets during his campaign, promising to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet”.

Lutnick, born to a Jewish family in Jericho, New York, said he agreed to take a more active role in Trump’s campaign after Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Trump, he said, showed “moral clarity “, when it came to Israel.

While the former president has been critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at times, he has said without evidence that the Israel-Hamas war would not have happened on his watch.

Lutnick joined Cantor Fitzgerald, a major financial firm, after graduating college in 1983 and became president and CEO in 1996. The company’s offices, located in One World Trade Center, were destroyed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The attack killed 658 of Lutnick’s employees, including his then 36-year-old brother, Gary.

John Paulson

John Paulson is a billionaire hedge fund manager who gained world attention and a $4 billion fortune when he bet against the US housing market during the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis.

Like Trump, Paulson, 68, was born in Queens, New York. After starting his career at the Boston Consulting Group, Paulson founded his own hedge fund, Paulson & Co. in 1994.

A vocal proponent of Trump’s economic agenda, particularly his plan for tariffs in an effort to boost U.S. manufacturing, Paulson told CNBC in September that the plan was “well-founded.”

“What Trump wants to do is create an American manufacturing powerhouse and use tariffs as a way to level the playing field,” he said.

Paulson has also called for privatizing mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that guarantee most American mortgages. Until the financial crisis in 2008, the two units were privately owned companies. But they were placed under complete federal control after they received a government bailout.

Paulson, a major investor in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, stands to gain seriously if the companies are returned to the private sector.

Robert Lighthizer

An international trade lawyer, Robert Lighthizer served as the US Trade Representative in Trump’s first administration.

The US Trade Representative is a Cabinet member who serves as the President’s principal trade advisor, negotiator, and spokesperson on trade issues.

Lighthizer, 77, is often described as a “protectionist” for his criticism of free trade. He has blamed free trade for the loss of American manufacturing jobs over the past few decades.

During his time in the Trump administration, he played a central role in the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada and has been described as the architect of the US trade war with China.

In an August 2020 article in Foreign Affairs magazine, Lighthizer, who also served as deputy trade representative in the Reagan administration, laid out his philosophy on trade policy:

Economic efficiency, maximization of output and geopolitical objectives, he argued, should not be the only factors considered in trade policy. Instead, managers should also consider factors such as job losses in the United States

“When it comes to taxes, health care, environmental regulation and other issues, policymakers routinely balance efficiency with other competing goals,” he wrote. “They should do the same for trade.”

Kevin Warsh

A banker and former member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Kevin Warsh is currently a Shepard Family Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Economics at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a Dean’s Visiting Scholar and Lecturer at its Graduate School of Business.

He began his career at Morgan Stanley in 1995, where he became vice president and managing director of the mergers and acquisitions division. In 2002, he was hired to serve as Special Assistant for Economic Policy to then-President George W. Bush and as Executive Secretary of the National Economic Council.

In 2006, he was appointed to the central bank by Bush, a position he served in until 2011. During his tenure, Warsh served as the board representative of the international organization The Group of Twenty, as well as the envoy to the emerging and advanced economies of Asia, according to Federal Reserve.

There are indications that Warsh may not be fully on board with Trump’s “America First” economic agenda, based on a 2011 op-ed he co-authored with Jeb Bush that said policymakers must “resist the rising tide of economic protectionism” , as they approach the nation’s economic challenges, according to Bloomberg.

Born in Albany, New York, Warsh, 54, graduated with a degree in public policy from Stanford University and received a law degree from Harvard University.

Marc Rowan

Marc Rowan, a billionaire investor and co-founder and CEO of Apollo Global Management, is another candidate for Treasury Secretary.

Raised on Long Island, New York, Rowan, 62, graduated with a BS and MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and began his career in investment banking.

After the firm he joined collapsed in 1990, he co-founded Apollo Global Management, a financial firm with two colleagues from his old firm. As of October, Apollo Global Management had $696 billion in assets under management.

Rowan currently serves as chairman of the Board of Advisors and is an initial funder and contributor to the development of the Penn Wharton Budget Model, a nonpartisan research initiative that provides analysis of the fiscal impact of public policy, according to his biography on his company’s website .

Last week, he praised the team Trump was putting together for his second administration, saying the country needed “wholesale change,” with specific praise for Musk’s major role in the next Trump administration.

“I think Elon Musk represents wholesale change, and I actually think we need wholesale change,” Rowan said at Yahoo Finance’s Invest conference last week.

Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is the White House correspondent for USA TODAY. You can follow her on X @SwapnaVenugopal

Cast: Bailey Schulz, Trevor Hughes; Reuters