Scott Bessent
U.S. Secretary of the Treasury since 2025 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Scott Kenneth Homer Bessent (/ˈbɛsənt/ BESS-ənt; born August 21, 1962) is an American government official, investor, and hedge fund manager serving as the 79th United States secretary of the treasury since 2025. Before his government service, he was a partner at Soros Fund Management and the founder of Key Square Group, a global macro investment firm.
Scott Bessent | |
|---|---|
Official portrait, 2025 | |
| 79th United States Secretary of the Treasury | |
| Assumed office January 28, 2025 | |
| President | Donald Trump |
| Deputy | Michael Faulkender |
| Preceded by | Janet Yellen |
| Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau | |
| In office February 3, 2025 – February 7, 2025 | |
| President | Donald Trump |
| Deputy | Zixta Martinez |
| Preceded by | Zixta Martinez (acting)[1] |
| Succeeded by | Russell Vought (acting) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Scott Kenneth Homer Bessent August 21, 1962 Conway, South Carolina, U.S. |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse |
John Freeman (m. 2011) |
| Children | 2 |
| Education | Yale University (BA) |
After graduating from Yale University with a bachelor's degree in 1984, Bessent began a career in finance. He was hired by Soros Fund Management, eventually becoming the head of its London office. In this role, he was a leading member of the group that successfully bet on the 1992 sterling crisis, generating over $1 billion in profit for the firm. After he left the Soros Fund, he established his own investment firm, Key Square Group, in 2015.
A major donor, fundraiser, and economic advisor for Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign,[2] Bessent was nominated for treasury secretary by Trump in November 2024 and confirmed by the United States Senate on January 27, 2025, by a vote of 68–29.
Bessent is the second openly gay man to serve in the Cabinet of the United States (after Pete Buttigieg) and the fifth openly gay man to serve in a cabinet-level office (after Demetrios Marantis, Richard Grenell, Buttigieg, and Vince Micone).[3] As the United States secretary of the treasury is fifth in the United States presidential line of succession, he is the highest-ranking openly LGBT person ever to serve in the U.S. federal government.[4]
Early life and education
Scott Kenneth Homer Bessent was born on August 21, 1962,[5] the oldest of three children of Barbara (née McLeod) and Homer Gaston Bessent Jr., a real estate agent.[6][7][8] He is of French Huguenot and Scottish descent.[9]
Bessent earned a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in political science from Yale University in 1984.[7][10] While in college, he was an editor of Yale Daily News, president of Wolf's Head Society, and treasurer for the class of 1984. He was chairman of the 1984 Yale Alumni Fund and assistant to the director of athletics.[7][11]
Career as investor and hedge fund manager
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Bessent interned with investor Jim Rogers.[12] After graduation, he worked at Brown Brothers Harriman, Kynikos Associates (Jim Chanos), and others.[13] Bessent joined Soros Fund Management (SFM) in 1991 and was a partner there throughout the 1990s, eventually becoming head of the London office.[6][14][15][16][17] In 1992, Bessent was a leading member of the team whose bet on the Black Wednesday collapse of the British pound garnered over $1 billion for the firm. His bet against the Japanese yen in 2013 brought additional profit.[18][19]
After resigning from SFM in 2000, Bessent founded a $1 billion hedge fund.[6][20] The fund closed in 2005. Bessent has said he learned that he should not change his style or the firm's approach because of investor preferences.[13] He was also a senior investment adviser to fund-of-funds Protégé Partners.[21][14] Bessent returned to SFM as chief investment officer from 2011 to 2015.[15][22] He left in 2015 to begin a new firm, Key Square Group.[16][17][23][24]
From 2006 to 2011, Bessent was an adjunct professor of economic history at Yale, where he taught three courses.[13][14]
Key Square Group
Bessent founded Key Square Group in 2015 with Michael Germino, who had been the global head of capital markets at SFM.[25] Key Square uses geopolitics and economics to make macro investments.[18] Key Square received a $2 billion anchor investment from George Soros.[26] At the end of 2017, Key Square's assets were $5.1 billion.[26][27] Key Square's main fund returns increased by 13% in 2016 but declined or broke even every year from 2017 to 2021 before making major gains in 2021, 2022 and 2023. The inconsistent track record scared away clients. Assets under management shrank from $5.1 billion in 2017 to $577 million in 2023 and the number of institutional investors declined from 180 to 20 over the same period.[28]
As part of a prearranged deal, in 2018 the firm returned the Soros capital as it took in other assets.[26] Its investors include Australia's sovereign wealth fund, Future Fund.[27]
Bessent announced that he would sever ties with the group as Treasury Secretary.[29]
Early involvement in politics
In 2000, Bessent hosted a fundraiser for Al Gore at his East Hampton, New York, home.[30] He has also donated to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.[31] In 2016, Bessent donated $1 million to Donald Trump's 2017 presidential inaugural committee.[32] In 2023 and 2024, he donated more than $1 million to Donald Trump's 2024 campaign.[33]
In February 2024, Bessent hosted a fundraiser in Greenville, South Carolina, that raised nearly $7 million for Trump's 2024 campaign.[34] In April 2024, he was a host of a Palm Beach, Florida, fundraiser that raised $50 million for Trump's campaign.[35] In July 2024, Bloomberg Businessweek reported that Bessent was a key economic adviser to Trump.[36] He proposed a three-point economic plan for Trump modeled on Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe's "Three Arrows" economic policy.[37]
Secretary of the Treasury (2025–present)
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Nomination and confirmation
On November 22, 2024, President-elect Trump announced his intention to nominate Bessent to serve as the United States secretary of the treasury in his second administration.[38][39][40] Bessent is the first openly gay treasury secretary, the second openly gay Senate-confirmed Cabinet secretary of an Executive Department after Pete Buttigieg, and the fifth openly gay person to serve in a Cabinet-level capacity, including interim officeholders and offices elevated to Cabinet-rank (after Demetrios Marantis, Richard Grenell, Buttigieg, and Vince Micone).[41][42]
Bessent appeared before the United States Senate Committee on Finance on January 16, 2025. During the hearing, he defended plans to impose tariffs, supported tax cut extensions, and called for tougher economic policies on China and Russia.[43]
The United States Senate Committee on Finance advanced his nomination to the Senate floor by a 16–11 vote on January 21, 2025.[44] The Senate voted 68–29 to approve his nomination on January 27.[45][46]
During Bessent's final confirmation hearing on January 27, a man intending to murder Bessent was arrested at the US Capitol. The man was in possession of multiple Molotov cocktails and a knife.[47]
Tenure
Bessent was sworn in as the 79th secretary of the treasury by Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh on January 28, 2025.[48] On January 31, Bessent gave Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency team access to the Treasury Department's payment system, which sends out $6 trillion annually in payments from federal agencies and contains millions of Americans' personal tax information.[49] On February 3, 2025, Bessent was concurrently named the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, replacing Zixta Martinez, who had been serving as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since the firing of Rohit Chopra on February 1.[50] Bessent immediately ordered the agency to halt all work.[51] On February 3, Bessent and acting United States secretary of commerce Jeremy Pelter were tasked with implementing a United States Sovereign Wealth Fund.[52]
In April 2025, after Trump announced widespread tariffs, Bessent told "every country": "do not retaliate, sit back, take it in, let's see how it goes, because, if you retaliate, there will be escalation."[53] Stocks then fell by over $6 trillion, but Bessent said: "I see no reason that we have to price in a recession"; he also rejected the idea that Americans would delay retirement due to worries about a fall in their retirement savings, saying that for "Americans who want to retire right now, the Americans who put away for years in their savings accounts, I think they don't look at the day-to-day fluctuations" of stocks.[54][55] Bessent has advocated pushing for concessions from U.S. trading partners to restrict their economic relationships with China in order to isolate China and gain leverage over it in potential trade talks.[56][57]
Views
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In a 2022 article commemorating former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, Bessent wrote: "President Trump's most enduring achievement may have been to wake the United States and the world to the growing dangers of an ever-more-antagonistic China. In response, Abe's greatest foreign policy achievement was taking this awakening and developing a multilateral solution for containment."[58]
Bessent has praised Trump's proposal to implement broad tariffs.[59] In a November 2024 Fox News op-ed, he wrote that the "U.S. opened its markets to the world, but China's resulting economic growth has only cemented the hold of a despotic regime" and argued tariffs "are a means to finally stand up for Americans".[60] Bessent argued that Trump's pledges to impose blanket 20% tariffs on all imports "were maximalist positions that would probably be watered down in talks with trading partners".[19] In March 2025, amid Trump's threats to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Bessent defended the tariffs, saying, "Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American Dream."[61]
Shadow Fed chair proposal
In a 2024 interview in Barron's, Bessent proposed an alternative to any plan by Trump to replace Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell, which was "to nominate and seek Senate confirmation of Powell's replacement well over a year before Powell's term ends in May 2026". This has been called the "shadow Fed chair" because the confirmed candidate could forecast Fed decisions (forward guidance) after May 2026, while the present Fed chair makes decisions on present Fed policies. In essence, the plan would weaken the Fed chair's ability to present forward guidance for most of 2026.[62]
As Bessent described the plan on an October 11, 2024, broadcast on Bloomberg Radio:[63]
If you believe forward guidance is good, why can't you give forward guidance on who the Fed chair is going to be. You could do one of two things: The current Fed chair could be reappointed, so you've created a path there. Or the new Fed chair nominee would give forward guidance beyond the current Fed chair's sell-by date.
Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, told Barron's the idea would "create a lot of noise in the market" and would create a situation where investors would have to decide which Fed chair, the present one or the future one, had the greatest weight in terms of the decisions the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the Federal Reserve's main policy-setting committee.[64]
Personal life
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Bessent resides in Charleston, South Carolina,[65] and belongs to the Huguenot Church,[66] a religious association whose expansion his ancestors supported in 1680.[9] Bessent is openly gay and married former New York City prosecutor John Freeman in 2011. They have two children.[67][68]
In 2016, Bessent purchased the historic John Ravenel House, owned by John Ravenel and inherited by his son St. Julien Ravenel and his wife Harriott Horry Ravenel. The building restoration project was awarded the Preservation Society of Charleston's Carolopolis Award in 2021. The mansion, known as the "Pink Palace", is on Battery Street.[69][70][71][72] In November 2024 it was listed for $22,250,000.[73] As of December 10, 2024, the sale was under contract.[74]
Bessent's net worth is at least $521 million, according to his December 28, 2024, financial assets disclosure by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.[75][76]
Board memberships
Bessent sits on the university council at Yale University.[11] He and his sister donated the Bessent Library to Yale University.[77] Bessent has endowed three scholarships at Yale: one for students who are first-generation college matriculants, one for students from South Carolina, and one for students from the Bronx.[77]
Bessent chaired the investment committee and is a former member of the executive committee on the board of trustees of Rockefeller University.[78][79] He formerly served on the board of God's Love We Deliver, an organization founded to deliver meals for homebound people with AIDS.[11][80] He is a trustee of Classical American Homes Preservation Trust (renamed the Richard Hampton Jenrette Foundation),[81] and a former board member of the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina.[78][82] Bessent is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.[11][78]
Philanthropy
Bessent opened two foundations in 2022, and created the McLeod Rehabilitation Center at the Shriners Hospital for Children in Greenville, South Carolina.[69][83] He also supports the Prince's Trust in London and the Harlem Children's Zone in New York City.[69] He has supported restoration of the Nathaniel Russell House, a National Historic Landmark in Charleston.[84]
References
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External links
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