Hedge fund manager Scott Bessent has been confirmed as the 79th secretary of the Treasury Department in a bipartisan Senate vote.
The Senate voted 68-29 on Monday to confirm Bessent, who was President Donald Trump’s pick to succeed former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Bessent, 62, will help oversee Trump’s push to extend his 2017 tax cuts and include other changes to the tax code promised on the campaign trail.
Bessent is a South Carolina native and graduated from Yale University before joining Soros Fund Management in the 1980s. He left the fund in 2015 as its chief investment officer and went on to found the New York-based investment firm Key Square Group.
During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, Bessent faced several questions about Republicans’ plans to extend the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, known as the Trump tax cuts, among other economic questions.
Republicans are keen on renewing the tax cuts and and adding new breaks, while Democrats are strongly against the Trump tax cuts and have said they are a giveaway to the wealthy. Bessent defended the tax plans during his hearing and praised Trump’s economic agenda.
“Today, I believe that President Trump has a generational opportunity to unleash a new economic golden age that will create more jobs, wealth, and prosperity for all Americans,” Bessent said.
Once sworn in, Bessent will be the first openly gay Treasury secretary and the highest ranking gay official in U.S. history. Bessent’s husband and two children sat behind him during his confirmation hearing last week.
Bessent was selected for the post over Cantor Fitzgerald head Howard Lutnick, who made a play for the role but ended up being nominated to lead the Commerce Department. Bessent was a close economic adviser to Trump during the campaign and has pledged to support the president’s “America first” agenda.
He urged Trump to embrace a “3-3-3” policy, which would mean pushing for 3% gross domestic product growth, cutting the deficit to 3% of gross domestic product by 2028, and increasing energy production by the equivalent of 3 million barrels of oil per day.
Bessent will be a close adviser to Trump on tariff policy. Trump has promised beefed-up tariffs as a way to capture revenue for the federal government and correct trade imbalances, although he declined to apply additional tariffs right out of the gate.
Rather, the president signed a memorandum that directed his administration to study trade policies and examine trade relationships with allies and adversaries alike.
Bessent will also be closely tied into the administration’s efforts to fight inflation, which, despite years of the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates high, has ticked back up in recent months.
On his first day in office, Trump signed a memorandum on inflation. The document, in very broad strokes, outlines an all-of-government approach to bringing down prices for consumers.
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It directs agencies to take actions that would lower the cost of housing and expand housing supply, cut “counterproductive” requirements that raise the costs of home appliances, slash “unnecessary” administrative expenses that raise healthcare costs, and create employment opportunities for American workers, among other broad directives.
Bessent will undoubtedly take an outsize role in shaping inflation policy for the new administration.