Trump also said he would nominate Russell Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget, a position Vought held during Trump’s first presidency. He was closely associated with Vought 2025 projecthe tried to distance himself during the campaign from a conservative blueprint for Trump’s second term.
Friday afternoon’s announcements showed how Trump was fleshing out the financial side of his new administration. While Bessent is deeply connected to Wall Street and can garner bipartisan support, Vought is known as a staunch Republican.
Trump said Bessent would “help me usher in a new Golden Age for the United States of America,” and that Vought “knows exactly how to dismantle the deep state and end the armed government.”
In another announcement, Trump said he had chosen Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer, D-Oregon, as labor secretary.
“I look forward to working with him to create tremendous opportunity for American workers,” Trump said in a statement.
Bessent, 62, is the founder of hedge fund Key Square Capital Management after working at Soros Fund Management since 1991. If confirmed by the Senate, he would be the nation’s first openly gay Treasury secretary.
He told Bloomberg in August that he decided to join Trump’s campaign in part to attack the US national debt. This would reduce government programs and other expenditures.
“This election cycle is America’s last chance to get out of this mountain of debt without becoming some kind of European-style socialist democracy,” he said at the time.
From November 8, the national debt is $35.94 trillionThe Trump and Biden administrations have added to it. Trump’s policies added $8.4 trillion to the national debt, while the Biden administration increased the national debt by $4.3 trillion, according to the Committee on a Responsible Federal Budget.
Even as he pushes to reduce national spending, Bessent has supported expansive provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which Trump signed into law in his first year in office. Estimates from various economic analyzes of the costs of the tax cuts range from nearly $6 trillion to $10 trillion over 10 years. Almost all provisions of the law will expire at the end of 2025.
Before becoming a Trump donor and adviser, Bessent donated to various Democratic causes in the early 2000s, most notably Al Gore’s presidential campaign. He also worked for George Soros, a major supporter of the Democrats. Bessent was highly influential in Soros’s London operations, including a famous 1992 bet against the pound that generated huge profits on “Black Wednesday,” when the pound was removed from European currencies.
Bessent’s selection was no surprise; he was among the names floated for the post of treasury secretary. in one Detroit Economic Club event in October, Trump called Bessent “one of the top analysts on Wall Street.”
Bessent told Bloomberg in August that he viewed the tariffs as “only a price adjustment” and “non-inflationary,” and that tariffs imposed during a second Trump administration would primarily target China. And he wrote in one the fox This week, they declared the tariffs “a useful tool to achieve the president’s foreign policy goals.” Tariffs can play a central role in ensuring allies spend more on their defense, open foreign markets to U.S. exports, end illegal immigration and ban fentanyl trafficking, or cooperate to prevent military attacks.”
Bessent told Fox News earlier this month that when asked if the tariffs were paying for Trump’s large-scale deportation operation, he was working on a plan he called “financial expulsions” that would limit the flow of remittances to migrants’ home countries.
Bessent also floated ideas on how the Trump administration could pressure Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, whose term ends in May 2026. Last month, Bessent suggested that Trump could appoint an alternate chair early, with that person acting as a “shadow.” chair, essentially with the goal of sidelining Powell.
But after the election, Bessent reportedly backtracked on that plan. Powell, for his part, He said he would not leave If Trump asked him to do so, he added that Trump, as president, does not have the authority to fire him.
Trump repeatedly attacked Powell during his first term as chairman for raising the Fed’s key rate in 2017 and 2018. During the 2024 campaign, he said that as president he should have a “say” in the central bank’s interest rate decisions. Presidents traditionally avoid commenting on the Fed’s policies.
Bessent and her husband, former New York prosecutor John Freeman, married in 2011 and have two children.
Vought, 48, served as the head of the Office of Management and Budget from mid-2020 until the end of Trump’s first term in 2021, having previously served as acting director and deputy director. A graduate of Wheaton College and the George Washington University School of Law, he had a deep knowledge of government finance tied to his Christian faith.
After Trump’s initial term, Vought founded the Center for American Renewal, a think tank that describes its mission as renewing “America’s consensus as a nation under God.”
The Center for American Renewal released its 2023 budget proposal titled “Pledge to End Jobs and Armed Government.” The proposal called for $11.3 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years and about $2 trillion in income tax cuts to bring the budget to a surplus by 2032.
“The immediate threat facing the nation is that the people do not rule the country; instead, government itself is increasingly weaponized against the people it seeks to serve,” Vought wrote in the introduction.
Vought has also served as executive and budget director of the Republican Study Committee, a caucus of conservative Republicans in the House. He also worked for Heritage Action, a political group affiliated with The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Vought’s proposed budget plan would cut food aid spending through the Department of Agriculture. There would be $3.3 trillion in spending cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services, largely due to how Medicaid and Medicare funds are distributed. It also has about $642 billion in cuts to the Affordable Care Act. The budgets of the Housing and Urban Planning and Education departments would also be reduced.
Vought’s budget ideas were independent of Trump, who has not fully laid out the details of his economic plans, other than campaigning on income tax cuts and tariff hikes. __
Associated Press writer Josh Boak contributed to this report.
