Trump will nominate Scott Bessent for Treasury Secretary

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday that he will nominate hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, an is in favor of deficit reductionto serve as his next Treasury Secretary.

Trump also said he would nominate Russel Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget, a position Vought held during Trump’s first presidency. Vought was closely involved in Project 2025a conservative plan for Trump’s second term that he tried to distance himself from during the campaign.

The announcements on Friday night showed how Trump fleshed out the economic side of his new administration. Although Bessent is closely aligned with Wall Street and could earn bipartisan support, Vought is known as a Republican hardliner.

Trump said Bessent would “help me usher in a new golden age for the United States,” while Vought “knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end the armed government.”

In a separate announcement, Trump said he had chosen Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a Republican from Oregon, as his Secretary of Labor.

“I look forward to working with her to create tremendous opportunities for American workers,” Trump said in a statement.

Bessent, 62, is the founder of hedge fund Key Square Capital Management, having worked on-and-off for Soros Fund Management since 1991. If confirmed by the Senate, he would be the nation’s first openly gay Treasury secretary.

He told Bloomberg in August that he decided to join Trump’s campaign in part to attack the rising U.S. national debt. That would include cutting government programs and other spending.

“This election cycle is the last chance for the United States to grow out of this mountain of debt without becoming some kind of European-style socialist democracy,” he then said.

From 8 Nov. the national debt is $35.94 trillionwhere both the Trump and Biden administrations have added it. Trump’s policies added $8.4 trillion to the national debt, while the Biden administration increased the national debt by $4.3 trillion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a fiscal watchdog.

Even as he pushes to lower the national debt by stopping spending, Bessent has supported expanding the provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which Trump signed in his first year in office. Estimates from various economic analyzes of the cost of the various tax cuts range between nearly $6 trillion and $10 trillion over 10 years. Almost all of the law’s provisions expire at the end of 2025.

Before becoming a Trump donor and adviser, Bessent donated to various Democratic causes in the early 2000s, most notably Al Gore’s presidential campaign. He also worked for George Soros, a big supporter of the Democrats. Bessent had an influential role in Soros’ operations in London, including his famous 1992 bet against the pound, which generated huge profits on “Black Wednesday” when the pound was delinked from European currencies.

Bessent’s choice was not surprising; he had been among the names floated for the role of finance secretary. By one October Detroit Economic Club event, Trump called Bessent “one of the best analysts on Wall Street.”

Bessent told Bloomberg in August that he views tariffs as a “one-time price adjustment” and “not inflationary,” and tariffs imposed under another Trump administration would primarily target China. And he wrote in a Fox News op-ed this week that tariffs are “a useful tool for achieving the president’s foreign policy goals. Whether it’s getting allies to spend more on their own defense, opening foreign markets to American exports , ensure cooperation to stop illegal immigration and prevent fentanyl trafficking or deter military aggression, customs can play a central role.”

Bessent told Fox News earlier this month, when asked if tariffs would pay for Trump’s massive deportation operation, that he had been working on a plan for what he called “financial deportations,” explaining that he would limit the flow of remittances to migrants’ home countries.

Bessent has also floated ideas on how the Trump administration could put pressure on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, whose term expires in May 2026. Last month, Bessent suggested that Trump could name a replacement chair early and let that person act as a “shadow ” chair, with the goal of essentially sidelining Powell.

But after the election, Bessent allegedly backed away from that plan. Powell, for his part, has said he would not resign if Trump asked him to, adding that Trump as president does not have the authority to fire him.

Trump repeatedly attacked Powell in his first term as president for raising the Fed’s key interest rate in 2017 and 2018. During the 2024 campaign, he said that as president he should have a “say” in the central bank’s interest rate decisions. Presidents traditionally avoid commenting on Fed policy.

Bessent and his husband, former New York City prosecutor John Freeman, married in 2011 and have two children.

Vought, 48, was head of the Office of Management and Budget from mid-2020 to the end of Trump’s first term in 2021, having previously served as acting director and deputy director. A graduate of Wheaton College and George Washington University Law School, he had a deep knowledge of public finance that has been paired with his own Christian faith.

After Trump’s inaugural term ended, Vought founded the Center for Renewing America, a think tank that describes its mission as renewing “a consensus about America as a nation under God.”

The Center for Renewing America released its own 2023 budget proposal titled “A Commitment to End Work and Weaponized Government.” The proposal envisioned spending reductions of $11.3 trillion over 10 years and approx. $2 trillion in tax cuts to bring the budget into surplus by 2032.

“The immediate threat facing the nation is the fact that the people no longer rule the country; instead, government itself is increasingly weaponized against the people it is meant to serve,” Vought wrote in the introduction.

Vought also previously served as executive and budget director of the Republican Investigative Committee, a caucus of conservative House Republicans. He also worked at Heritage Action, the political group linked to The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Vought’s proposed budget plan would cut food aid spending through the Department of Agriculture. There would be $3.3 trillion in spending reductions in the Health and Human Services Department, in large part through how Medicaid and Medicare funds are distributed. It also includes about $642 billion in cuts to the Affordable Care Act. Budgets for the Housing and Urban Development and Education departments would also be cut.

Vought’s budget ideas were independent of Trump, who has not fully spelled out the details of his economic plans, other than campaigning for income tax cuts and rate hikes. __

Associated Press writer Josh Boak contributed to this report.