Donald Trump to nominate Scott Bessent as Treasury secretary, ending tough battle for key job: sources

President-elect Donald Trump will nominate hedge fund mogul Scott Bessent as the next Treasury secretary, four sources told The Post, ending a tight race that saw intense jockeying among power players across Wall Street.

Bessent “got the thumbs up” late Thursday during a meeting with Trump, 78, at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., a source close to the situation told The Post.

A flurry of last-minute media reports had brought in several candidates for the job. late Thursday, The Wall Street Journal writes that financier Kevin Warsh had met with Trump on Wednesday about the Treasury Department — and possibly replacing Jerome Powell as Fed chairman when his term ends in 2026.

Trump also met about the Treasury Department’s role with Marc Rowan, the billionaire head 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 endorsed the president-elect’s pro-tariff stance in a series of posts and media appearances over the past year.

A source close to the Trump transition team told the Post earlier Friday that the hedge fund executive was “under consideration” for the role ahead of a formal announcement.

“If you want to bring a genius into that job who is loyal to the president, Scott is the guy,” said a source close to the situation.

A faction of Trump World had been pushing for Bessent for weeks, trying to outmaneuver Howard Lutnick — managing director of Cantor Fitzgerald and co-chairman of Trump’s transition team — in what has reportedly escalated into a bitter “knife fight” for the coveted role.

One insider, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Lutnick, a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, was eventually handed the post of commerce secretary “to calm things down.”

After Lutnick left the Treasury race, sources said Trump continued to conduct interviews to flesh out his options. Bessent and Rowan were both spotted at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday.

“All the top investors and hedge funds said Scott Bessent is their number one choice because of his understanding of macroeconomics,” said one veteran Wall Street insider.

A source briefed on Rowan’s interview, meanwhile, said the 62-year-old was “an anti-customer and that was a non-starter for the president.”

Another staunch Trump loyalist and major donor, billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson, ruled himself out of an administration post just a week after the Nov. 5 election.

A South Carolina native, Bessent previously served as investment director for George Soros and was instrumental in the Hungarian-born financier’s “Black Wednesday” trade in 1992.

The bet against the British pound “broke the Bank of England” and brought an eye-watering $1 billion payday for Soros, cementing his reputation as a titan of global finance.

Writing in Wall Street Journal earlier this monthBessent said Trump’s second term would usher in “a revitalized economy for all Americans.”

Bessent also lashed out at the Biden-Harris administration for presiding over four years of “reckless spending” that has seen Uncle Sam’s debt pile hit an eye-watering $35 trillion this year.

“The Biden administration’s mismanagement has created serious challenges that Mr. Trump will have to overcome,” Bessent said in the Nov. 10 statement, adding that Trump “has a mandate to re-privatize the American economy through deregulation and tax reform to spur the supply-side growth that he delivered in his first term.”

Much of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts expire next year, giving Bessent the chance to help shape fiscal policy under the incoming commander-in-chief.

The president-elect has already tapped Tesla titan Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency and tighten the federal government’s purse strings.

Diana Glebova contributed reporting.