Who will Donald Trump choose as his treasury secretary? What to know about the top candidates
President-elect Donald Trump has rolled out his picks for his next secretary of state, secretary of defense and attorney general, but he hasn't yet announced one of the most critical Cabinet roles: treasury secretary.
The candidate Trump chooses would be taking over a high-level Cabinet position charged with advising the president on matters related to financial, economic and tax policy. They will have to be confirmed by the Senate before they can take on the pivotal position.
Trump's 2024 reelection campaign centered around lowering prices and making other economic promises to the American people. The president-elect has called himself “Tariff Man” and said he plans to impose up to 20% tariffs on all imported goods and additional tariffs of 60% to 100% on goods from China.
The idea is to drive up the price of imports to make American-made products more appealing. Trump's plans have been heralded by some domestic manufacturers competing against low-cost goods from other countries, but economists warn tariffs can be a double-edged sword by driving up inflation and interest rates.
Many of those economists have cautioned that tariffs could harm the economy by raising costs and lowering output. It also leaves open the possibility that trade partners could retaliate with their own tariffs.
However, most contenders for Trump's treasury secretary have either been longtime supporters of tariffs or said they back them since the election.
Here are some of the buzz-creating candidates:
Scott Bessent
Scott Bessent, 62, is the CEO of Key Square Capital Management, a Connecticut-based hedge fund. Before that, he was a chief investment officer for Soros Fund Management, founded by George Soros, a longtime supporter of progressive and liberal political causes.
Bessent, a top Trump fundraiser, is a champion of the president-elect’s economic policy of deregulation, increasing domestic energy production and tax cuts.
On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly said he'd push to expand drilling and further increase already record-setting oil-and-gas production and cut corporate tax rates. He also tapped Tesla owner Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new initiative labeled the Department of Government Efficiency.
In a recent Fox News column, Bessent offered full-throated support of tariffs, arguing that the tools "can increase revenue to the Treasury, encourage businesses to restore production and reduce our reliance on industrial production from strategic rivals.”
The hedge fund manager has been known to cross party lines. He hosted a fundraiser for then-Vice President Al Gore when he was running for president in 2000.
A longtime New York City resident, Bessent now lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with his husband John Freeman, a former New York City prosecutor. The couple has two children.
Howard Lutnick
Howard Lutnick, 63, is a Wall Street billionaire and a top Trump ally. He has already been working alongside Trump transition team co-chair Linda McMahon to help the incoming president prepare to fill some 4,000 political positions in the federal government.
A longtime friend of Trump’s, Lutnick has said he agrees with the president-elect’s policies on immigration, cryptocurrency and tariffs on imported goods.
Cracking down on immigration was the centerpiece of Trump's reelection bid. Trump also embraced digital assets during his campaign, promising to make the United States the "crypto capital of the planet."
Lutnick, born to a Jewish family in Jericho, New York, said he agreed to take a more active role in Trump’s campaign after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel. Trump, he said, displayed “moral clarity” when it came to Israel.
While the former president has, at times, been critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he has said without evidence that the Israel-Hamas war wouldn't have happened on his watch.
Lutnick joined Cantor Fitzgerald, a major financial services firm, after graduating college in 1983 and rose to president and CEO in 1996. The company’s offices, which were located in One World Trade Center, were destroyed in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The attack killed 658 of Lutnick's employees, including his then-36-year-old brother, Gary.
John Paulson
John Paulson is billionaire hedge fund manager who gained the world’s attention and $4 billion in fortune when he bet against the U.S. housing market during the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007.
Like Trump, Paulson, 68, was born in Queens, New York. After beginning his career at Boston Consulting Group, Paulson founded his own hedge fund, Paulson & Co. in 1994.
A vocal advocate of Trump’s economic agenda, especially his plan for tariffs in an attempt to boost U.S. manufacturing, Paulson told CNBC in September that the plan was “well founded.”
“What Trump wants to do is create an American manufacturing powerhouse, and using tariffs as a way to level the playing field,” he said.
Paulson has also called for privatizing mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored enterprises which guarantee most U.S. mortgages. Until the financial crisis of 2008, the two entities were privately-run companies. But they were put under complete federal control after they received a government bailout.
Paulson, who is a big investor in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, stands to make serious profit if the companies are returned to the private sector.
Robert Lighthizer
An international trade lawyer, Robert Lighthizer served as the U.S. trade representative in Trump’s first administration.
The U.S. trade representative is a Cabinet member who serves as the president’s principal trade advisor, negotiator, and spokesperson on trade issues.
Lighthizer, 77, is often described as a "protectionist" for his criticism of free trade. He has blamed free trade for the loss of American manufacturing jobs over the past few decades.
During his time in the Trump administration, he played a central role in the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada and has been described as the architect of the U.S. trade war with China.
In an article in Foreign Affairs magazine in August 2020, Lighthizer, who also served as the deputy trade representative in the Reagan administration, laid out his philosophy on trade policy:
Economic efficiency, maximizing output and geopolitical goals, he argued, should not be the only factors considered in trade policy. Instead, leaders should also consider factors such as job losses in the U.S.
“When it comes to taxes, health care, environmental regulation, and other issues, policymakers routinely balance efficiency with other competing goals,” he wrote. “They should do the same for trade.”
Kevin Warsh
A banker and a former member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Kevin Warsh is currently a Shepard Family Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Economics at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a Dean’s Visiting Scholar and lecturer at its Graduate School of Business.
He began his career at Morgan Stanley in 1995, rising to vice president and executive director of the Mergers and Acquisitions department. In 2002, he was tapped to serve as then- President George W. Bush’s special assistant for economic policy and as executive secretary of the National Economic Council.
In 2006, he was appointed to the central bank by Bush, a position he served in until 2011. During his term, Warsh served as the Board’s representative to the international organization the Group of Twenty as well as emissary to the emerging and advanced economies in Asia, according to the Federal Reserve.
There are indications that Warsh may not be fully on board with Trump's "America First" economic agenda based on a 2011 op-ed he co-authored with Jeb Bush, which said policymakers must “resist the rising tide of economic protectionism" as they approach the nation's financial challenges, according to Bloomberg.
Born in Albany, New York, Warsh, 54, graduated with a degree in public policy from Stanford University and went on receive a law degree from Harvard University.
Marc Rowan
Marc Rowan, a billionaire investor and co-founder and CEO of Apollo Global Management, is another candidate for treasury secretary.
Raised on Long Island, New York, Rowan, 62, graduated with a B.S. and M.B.A from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and began his career in investment banking.
After the firm he joined collapsed in 1990, he co-founded Apollo Global Management, a financial services company with two colleagues from his old firm. As of October, Apollo Global Management had $696 billion in assets under management.
Rowan currently serves as the chair of the Board of Advisors and is an initial funder and contributor to the development of the Penn Wharton Budget Model, a nonpartisan research initiative which provides analysis of public policy’s fiscal impact, according to his bio on his company's website.
Last week, he praised the team Trump was putting together for his second administration saying the country needed a “wholesale change,” with specific praise for Musk's major role in the next Trump administration.
"I think Elon Musk represents wholesale change, and I think we actually need wholesale change," Rowan said at Yahoo Finance’s Invest conference last week.
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House Correspondent for Paste BN. You can follow her on X @SwapnaVenugopal
Contributing: Bailey Schulz, Trevor Hughes; Reuters