Donald Trump, the next president, has announced his picks for a number of important government jobs, but he has not yet announced his choice for Treasury secretary.
He seems to be choosing between Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, and Scott Bessent, head of a hedge fund. Other names are still being considered for the job, though. As the country’s chief financial officer and the president’s major economic advisor, the head of the Treasury Department is a very important job.
It was Lutnick’s job as co-chair of Trump’s transition team in 2024 to hire people, but now he wants to hire someone himself. Earlier, several news outlets said that some Trump supporters think Bessent doesn’t back his tariff plans enough.
Lutnick, on the other hand, told a Trump crowd last month that America was great about 125 years ago when it “had no income tax and all we had were tariffs.” He also said that tariffs were “an amazing tool” in a September talk with CNBC. A big part of his fame comes from the fact that he ran the privately owned investment bank and brokerage Cantor Fitzgerald after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when 658 of its workers died.
Of course, Bessent, who is the founder and CEO of Key Square Capital Management, has also said some nice things about taxes. It was last month in an Economist column that he said “broad-based tariffs” would work better than “microeconomic interventions like industrial policy that generally rely on the government to pick winners and losers.”
Bessent has also often supported the president-elect’s economic policies. He used to be the chief investment officer at Soros Fund Management, the company started by famous investor and Democratic megadonor George Soros. In July, he told MarketWatch that the idea that they would cause inflation was “absurd.”
Trump wants all imports to be taxed at 10% or up to 20%, and he wants to tax Chinese goods extra 60%.
There are also other names that have been going around for the Treasury job. There are two people Trump could choose: Robert Lighthizer, who is known for supporting taxes and was U.S. trade representative in the first Trump administration; or Jay Clayton, who was head of the SEC in the first Trump administration. John Paulson, the famous billionaire investor, dropped out of the race for Treasury earlier this week.
Bet market Polymarket says that Bessent has a 72% chance of becoming the choice for Treasury, while Lutnick only has a 30% chance. Some people, like Lighthizer and Clayton, are at 1%.
