The New Cabinet? Scott Bessent
It is said that the money markets breathed a sigh of relief when they learned that President-elect Donald Trump named hedge fund manager Scott Bessent to serve as his new Treasury secretary. Bessent, who is 62 years old, is the founder of the investment firm Key Square Capital Management. In his new role, he will be expected to undertake an economic agenda expected to be built around cutting taxes and imposing tariffs.
President Trump himself had high praise for his choice of Bessent, stating “Scott is widely respected as one of the world’s foremost international investors and geopolitical and economic strategists. He will help me usher in a new Golden Age for the United States, as we fortify our position as the world’s leading economy, he will help reinvigorate the private sector, and help curb the unsustainable path of federal debt.”
The Secretary of the Treasury Department has broad oversight of tax policy, public debt, international finance and sanctions.
Bessent was a partner at Soros Fund Management and was the founder of Key Square Group, a global macro investment firm. He has been a major fundraiser and donor for President Trump and was an economic advisor for the Trump 2024 campaign. If confirmed, Bessent will be the second openly gay Cabinet secretary in U.S. history and the third overall openly gay cabinet level official.
His full name is Scott Kenneth Homer Bessent and he was born in August of 1962 in Conway, South Carolina, the oldest of three children of Barbara (née McLeod) and Homer Gaston Bessent Jr., a real estate agent. He earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Yale in 1984 and served as an editor for The Yale Daily News, the 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. After graduation, he worked at Brown Brothers Harriman, Kynikos Associates and in 1991 he joined Soros Fund Management. He was a partner there throughout the 1990s, eventually became head of the London office. In 1992, Bessent was a leading member of the team whose prediction of the Black Wednesday collapse of the British pound earned over $1 billion for the firm. His prediction against the Japanese yen in 2013 was also a correct and profitable one.
Bressent resigned from SFM in 2000, and he founded a $1 billion hedge fund. The fund closed in 2005. He was also a senior investment advisor at Protégé Partners. He returned to Soros Fund Management and was chief investment officer from 2011 to 2015. He left in 2015 to begin a new firm, Key Square Group, a firm he founded with Michael Germino. At the end of 2017, Key Square's assets were $5.1 billion. Key Square's main fund returns increased by 13% in 2016 but lost money or broke even every year from 2017 to 2021 before making major gains in 2021, 2022 and 2023. 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.
In 2000, Bessent hosted a fundraiser for Al Gore and he has also donated to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. In 2016, Bessent donated $1 million to Donald Trump's 2017 presidential inaugural committee and in 2023 and 2024, he donated more than $1 million to the Trump 2024 campaign. In February 2024, Bessent hosted a fundraiser in Greenville, South Carolina that raised nearly $7 million for Trump's 2024 campaign. In April 2024, Bessent was a host for a fundraiser in Palm Beach, Florida that raised $50 million for the Trump campaign. Bessent became a key economic advisor to Trump and he has proposed a three-point economic plan for Trump. Bessent supports Trump's proposal to implement broad tariffs, but he has said that Trump's pledge to impose blanket 20% tariffs on all imports, are "maximalist positions that would probably be watered down in talks with trading partners."
From 2006 to 2011, Bessent was an adjunct professor of economic history at Yale, where he taught three courses. He sits on the university council at Yale. He 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. Bessent also chairs the investment committee and is a member of the executive committee on the board of trustees of Rockefeller University. At one time he served on the board of an organization called "God's Love We Deliver," an organization founded to deliver meals for homebound people with AIDS. Bessent is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Bessent created two foundations in 2022, and created the McLeod Rehabilitation Center at the Shriners Hospital for Children in Greenville, South Carolina. He also supports the Prince's Trust in London and the Harlem Children's Zone in New York City.
Bessent resides in Charleston, South Carolina and is a member of the Huguenot Church, which his ancestors helped to build in 1680. Bessent is married to former New York City prosecutor John Freeman, and the couple has two children.