SPECIAL REPORT: Trump Nominates Scott Bessent To Lead US Treasury

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Bloomberg Audio Studios. I'm Kayleigh Lyons alongside Joe Matthew. We've gotten confirmation of what Bloomberg had already reported. The president-elect Donald Trump is nominating Scott Besant of Key Square Group to be the secretary of the Treasury. Donald Trump, in a statement posted on True Social, describing him as someone who has long been a strong advocate of the America First Agenda, Joe.

We actually spent some time with the 62 year old Scott Besset right here at this table in Washington, D.C., Kaylee, not that long ago when it was still unclear who was going to win the election. And of course, since then, we've heard any number of names bandied about Scott Besset has always been on the short list. We spent some time talking about his relationship with Donald Trump and what Donald Trump's relationship with the Federal Reserve will be. Let's listen.

He has a deep understanding of financial markets as opposed to most politicians. So he wants to be involved in the conversation. He has very well-formed opinions. He has a lot of private sector friends. So he just wants to be a voice.

just part of our conversation that touched on a lot of themes. Kaylee, one thing that Scott Bessent was able to do was to convince the markets, to convince the news media that this idea of combining tariffs and tax cuts could result in meaningful growth. This is an idea that has had many from economists to market watchers here in Washington, suggest that it could bring great deficits to Washington, D.C. Scott Bessent has been very effective in arguing against that idea to the point where Donald Trump thought he was the messenger for this job.

Yeah, and it's going to remain to be seen to what extent it is Scott Bessin's voice in the role of Treasury Secretary if he is indeed confirmed for it. That will be the most defining or authoritative on economic policy, keeping in mind here that someone else who was in contention for this position, Howard Lutnik, has been named to be Secretary of Commerce with, according to the president-elect, jurisdiction over trade and tariffs specifically. So how these departments will be working together in order to make Donald Trump's campaign agenda an actual reality

is something we'll be watching here, as well as those who will have yet to be named two top economic positions, including on the National Economic Council and the Council of Economic Advisers. In part, in the statement, Donald Trump has just put out on true social. He has described that Bessin's role will be about putting the US fully in a position of the world's leading economy and the center of innovation in entrepreneurism. He goes on to say that America

will have the greatest economic boom in the great people of the United States of America, essentially, will be benefiting from Scott Bess and his Treasury Secretary. Well, ensure that no Americans will be left behind in the next and greatest economic boom. Glowing comments, as you would expect from the president-elect here, talking about somebody, by the way, who is a friend. They've spent a lot of time together talking about economic philosophy. Scott Bess and worked throughout the course of this campaign as an economic advisor.

to Donald Trump and in fact helped to craft some of the speeches that were directed most specifically at the economy. Assuming that he is confirmed, Kayleigh, we should also note the fact that he would be the first openly gay Treasury Secretary in American history as the 79th Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.

Yeah, certainly historically significant. And as you talk about this notion of friendship and having the ear of the president elect, someone else who does, as we've come to understand, is Elon Musk, who actually, if we all recall just days ago, weighed in on the jockeying for treasury and described Bessent

as a business as usual choice. He was advocating for Howard Lutnik, but he said business as usual is driving America bankrupt, so we need change one way or another. Clearly, Donald Trump has not sided with Elon Musk on this, as he has named Besant Now to be Treasury Secretary, but I wonder if business as usual is actually what financial markets will have been looking for, and we'll have to wait and see the reaction to this pick when futures open on Sunday evening.

That's for sure. We have to wait until 6 p.m. on Sunday. Now, interesting timing of how this all dropped. The markets will have the weekend to decipher this. We have seen, by the way, a bit of a drop in Bitcoin, which is the one thing that we can kind of factor in. We talked a lot about, though, the impact that immigration or the relationship that immigration has with our job market and the impact that a mass deportation might have. Here's what Scott Bessin had to say about it.

In this cycle, when we had the massive inflation, we get, whether it's 11 million new arrivals or President Trump thinks 21 million new arrivals, it does push down wages on the bottom quintile, which I think is abominable. These are working people, Americans, who are seeing their wages get pushed down.

But of course, as we consider the prospect of mass deportation of a lot of the economic policies, including around taxes that Donald Trump has talked about, it is not going to be entirely up to individuals like the president or the secretary of the treasury to actually enact those policies. There has to be a relationship here with Congress who has authority over a lot of these monetary matters. So the relationship that Besset will have on Capitol Hill is something to watch. In fact, most immediately his ability to get confirmed by those on Capitol Hill in the US Senate.

That's right. And after some of the other more controversial names that we've been talking about, this is not considered to be a very heavy lift for the transition team in achieving this confirmation. We'll have a long way to go here talking about this and the relationship that the Treasury will have with the Commerce Department, suddenly now overseeing the U.S. Trade Representative. When it comes to tariffs, this is going to be an interesting combination.

Yeah, and that reminds us that we still have yet to learn who the next US trade representative will be who will lead the National Economic Council have those roles inside the White House that also could be formative in the actual defining of policy and the implementation of it. But this was a large selection for a president elect who campaigned almost entirely on the issue.

of the economy. We knew he was taking the role of Treasury Secretary very seriously. He took his time in making this decision, but now we've understood and we've learned that it is Scott Bessent who ultimately gets the nomination. Interviews at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday with Bessent, with Warsh, with Rowan, clearly with three boxes to check. MAGA, Wall Street, and ready for TV. Donald Trump has made his picks. Scott Bessent now officially the nominee for Treasury Department.

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