Business Leaders and Political Activists React to Trump’s Treasury Pick: ‘Extremely Smart’
President-elect Donald Trump has selected Scott Bessent to serve as the 79th Treasury secretary in United States history. Bessent is a Wall Street executive who has praised Trump’s tariff agenda and advocated for making America great again and “Iran broke again.” He allegedly threatened to resign from his position at Soros Fund Management over its consideration of restricting investments in Israel, and he would be the first openly gay Treasury secretary. Just who is Scott Bessent, and what do the people who know him best say about him?
Bessent earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from Yale in 1984. During his senior year, he was president of Wolf’s Head Society, one of the Ivy League school’s premiere secret honor societies. Early in his career, he was hired as a research assistant for Jim Rogers, an investment manager who co-founded Quantum Fund with George Soros. In the decades since Bessent has established himself as a hedge fund manager.
Bessent’s nomination has drawn praise from across the political spectrum. Gavin Wax, president of the blossoming New York Young Republicans Club, described the money manager as “a fantastic pick that showcases the Republican Party has finally returned to its roots as a tariff party.” Vish Burra, a conservative influencer who worked for former Reps. Matt Gaetz and George Santos, similarly praised the pick as having “[an] ideological commitment to executing the America First agenda at the Treasury Department.”
Burra also praised Bessent’s competence as a businessman and said the skills he acquired are transferable to his new role. “Scott Bessent will provide President Trump a brilliant talent when it comes to operational capability handling money and markets,” Burra said.
Business leaders such as billionaire businessman John Catsimatidis, who founded the conglomerate Red Apple Group, offered high praise for Bessent. “I do like Scott Bessent’s nomination for Treasury secretary. I have only met him a handful of times but he is very competent, hard working and extremely smart,” Catsimatidis said.
“He also made ‘a zillion dollars’ for George Soros!” he said.
Bessent’s ties with Soros have been a subject of concern for some on the right. However, support for his nomination has not broken down in a predictable way. Some, such as Elon Musk, criticized Bessent as a “business-as-usual choice” before he was nominated. Others — including political outsiders who want to uproot the system — backed Bessent. Steve Bannon is among them. Politics makes for strange bedfellows, as Sen. Lindsey Graham — by no means a populist in the sense that Bannon is — also supported the selection of Bessent.
Other business leaders, such as Skybridge Capital founder and frequent Trump critic Anthony Scaramucci, have also praised Trump’s selection of Bessent. “Scott Bessent is a great guy and a safe and stable pair of hands for the country,” he wrote on X.
In a recent op-ed in the Economist, Bessent echoed Trump’s longstanding argument that economic relationships should be tied to security agreements. “American security assurances and market access should be linked with commitments from allies to spend more on our collective security and to structure their economies in ways that reduce imbalances over time,” he wrote.
Bessent argues that we should modify international trade policy to boost American manufacturing and reduce dependence on China, but holds that we should not withdraw from the international system entirely. In an article for Fox News, Bessent noted that the two underlying assumptions undergirding America’s turn to free trade in the 20th century were that the economic benefits would outweigh the cost of lost jobs and that free trade would incentivize countries like China to democratize. “Neither of these predictions has proven to be correct,” he wrote.
Catimsatidis noted the utility of tariffs as an instrument for promoting domestic manufacturing: “The United States of America could increase our businesses substantially by giving incentives to companies that want to leave to stay by imposing tariffs,” he said.
Bessent pointed out that even Alexander Hamilton, America’s first Treasury secretary, favored tariffs. What he did not say, but what is also true, is that even Adam Smith, who authored The Wealth of Nations, the intellectual founding piece for free trade, argued that retaliatory tariffs and national security are justifications for imposing tariffs on imports.
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