Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. This week, confirmation hearings began for President elect Donald Trump's cabinet nominees.
This hearing will come to order, and.
On Thursday, Wall Street paid close attention to one of them, in particular, the Senate Finance Committee's hearing with Scott Bessant, the hedge fund manager who's in line to run the US Treasury Department.
It's an honor and a privilege to be considered by this committee as the President's nominee for the Secretary of the Treasury.
In his opening remarks, Besson outlined the vision he has for his role in Trump's administration.
We must secure supply chains that are vulnerable to strategic competitors, and we must carefully deploy sanctions as part of a whole of government approach to address our national security requirements. And critically critically, we must ensure that the US dollar remains the world's reserve currency.
Besson also spoke about extending Donald Trump's twenty seventeen tax cuts, and this.
Is the single most important economic issue of the day. This is pass fail.
With Besson's confirmation by a Republican controlled Senate all but assured the focus now shifts to what he'd do as Treasury Secretary. It's a job that entails everything from oversight of the twenty eight trillion dollar market for US government debt to imposing economic sanctions. From Bloomberg News, this is the Big Take. I'm David Gurra today on the show.
Seleiah Mosen, a senior Washington correspondent and the host of The Big Take, DC, joins me to talk about how Scott Besson went from being a relative unknown to someone poised to hold one of the most powerful jobs in global economics. Heyce Leah, good to talk to you.
Hey, David.
So, Donald Trump nominated Scott Beson to be his Treasury sectory back in November. Here we are on the day of his confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill. What has been going on behind the scenes, both in Washington and in South Florida at mar A Lago in advance of this confirmation hearing today?
Well, Bessint has been spending his time vetting candidates for a lot of Senate confirmed positions inside the Treasure Department. He has a goal, as we've reported in Bloomberg, that he wants to return the Treasure Department personnel to a group of people who are very market savvy and no markets really really well, because every couple of years there's an unexpected hiccup in markets, and that's when you need people who have experienced day to day in the plumbing
of the global financial system. And that's a little bit of a ding at the Yellen Department. Both Republicans and Democrats, including people inside of Yellen's Treasure Department who have previously worked there, have said that Yellen's Treasury has been a lot of PhD economists without enough emphasis on personnel with market intuition and knowledge.
I think Scott Besens is becoming more of a household name. I think it's safe to say he wasn't one before all of this. How has he gotten to this point in time? What steps did he have to take from going from somebody who, yes, might be well known in some corners of Wall Street to someone who's the all but confirmed Treasury Secretary.
This is a great story, actually, David So our colleague Josh Green and I dug into this for our story on Bessent this week about how he went from having hosted a fundraiser for al Gore then in twenty sixteen, when Trump was running his first presidential bid. He did not align himself publicly with Trump, but once Trump won, he did donate a million dollars to Trump's inaugural committee, so just showing that, okay, he was a little Trump
curious at that time. And what we discovered was that after Steve Bannon left the White House in the early part of the first term for Trump, Bannon met Vessont at a investor conference in Hong Kong, and they met and they ended up sitting together over lunch and had this long four hour conversation where according to Bannon, Vessent wasn't looking for access, which is usually what people are looking for, but really he just wanted to understand from
an investor perspective, what are Trump's populist economic policies. And since then they apparently stayed in close touch. And it wasn't until after COVID, after Biden was in for a little bit that Besant started to reach out and forge deeper relationships or new relationships with key advisors close to Trump and really start building a profile. And he's known
the Trump family for thirty years. He knew Trump's brother and even went to his funeral years ago, and so he was a familiar face, and it was through Don Junior, who he knew a little bit better, that he was able to get a meeting with Trump at some point.
And then he started to write these notes for his hedge fund clients about the Trump rally and how stock markets really think or want Trump to win, and that got to Trump, and you would hear by the spring of twenty twenty four, Trump saying things like and how about that Scott Besson He's so smart? Markets really like him, and he started name checking him, and that's it was spring of twenty twenty four that Bloomberg reported that Bessett was in the mix with a couple of other people
for treasure secretary if Trump wins. And so you just slowly saw Bessant out in the media writing op eds, doing TV hits, but also privately helping Trump write his economic policy speeches, trying to think outside the box and serve the president's populist agenda.
Scott Bessett has done something remarkable, and I want you to explain how he's been able to do it, and that is he's ingratiated himself to present elect He's become his pick to lead the Treasury Department. That comes with all kinds of speculation about how erratic that might be, what what his life is going to be like if he's confirmed for this job, as it seems he will be.
And all the while, he has instilled in Wall Street this sense of confidence that because he's worked at a hedge fund, because he has the background that he has, he's going to perhaps cast some stability on this administration. How has he done that?
Yeah, it's a tightrope walk that he has done so far, and he has a long way to go to maintain all of this. He seems to really understand Trump's economic agenda and adhere to it. He does not come from a traditional part of Wall Street that has made most Treasure secretaries who have landed. You know men who have landed in that job, if they come from Wall Street, they come from Goldman and I'm talking about Bob Ruben, Hank Pulsen, and Stephen Mnush. But Bessett has really deep
knowledge of how markets function. He has traded, he's run a hedge fund, He worked for George Soros. He was a participant when George Soros famed Miss Lee broke the pound in the nineties when he made this huge bet that government policy was not painting out well and it was damaging to the pound, and he basically shorted the
pound and Bessett was part of that. And so that goes to show how well read he is in currency policy, how the interaction between government economic policy and currencies, where that meets, and so you can see that he really has spent a lot of time at that intersection between government economic policy and markets.
So, Leah, I know your focus over these last couple of months has been on what he would do with the department if he's confirmed. Do we know now well how he would approach this role and does his vision for that, his vision for what a teratie secretary should do, does that match up with what the president elect thinks a treasury secretary should do?
You know, I do think that it matches up. But as usual with Trump and the way that he governs, it's a very tight needle to thread.
Usually.
I think about the example of Stephen Mnushan, who was Trump's treasure secretary all four years in the first term. Now he lasted all four years. There was such high turnover, and Mnusian was able to do that through selective silences. You know, if policy decisions did not go the way that he thought they should, he would just kind of go quiet and not show up on Fox News or CNBC to talk about the policies. But he would never publicly break from the president. So Mnushan really understood that
that this is the president's administration. He is my boss, and that is going to be the key to best and success. Now the interesting part will be when or if Trump makes a decision and it doesn't jibe with what markets want, and markets tank. Anyone market tanks, and with Trump, he really cares about what stock markets think of his policies. Now a lot of presidents do. Bill Clinton famously did in the nineties. I'm actually bond markets were able to trigger a change in Clinton's economic agenda,
and that could happen with Trump and has happened. He kind of tests to see what is the market reaction to one idea or another. But he also does have a little bit of a steel stomach to weather some of that storm. So it's going to be really difficult. I think that's going to be one of Besson's challenges is how to maintain calm that Trump wants that market wants that Besnt wants that calm in markets while also carrying out a sometimes wild policymaking regime.
Coming up after the break, the headwinds that Bessent could face during a second Trump administration. That's next. I'm talking with Seleiah Mosen, host of The Big Take DC, about Scott Bessant, who spent several hours on Thursday on Capitol Hill in a confirmation hearing he's President Elect Donald Trump's
pick to be the next Secretary of the Treasury. When you look at what Scott Besant hopes to accomplish in this job, what are the challenges that he faces to implementing those policy priorities implementing the policy priorities of the president elect.
The biggest challenge will be Trump and Trump's style of like sort of shooting from the hip. When he wants to make policy, he'll just tweet or post something on truth social and Bessett may or may not know that's coming. The example that I think of is in twenty seventeen,
I was standing outside of the Treasure Department. All the Treasury officials are there, and it was we were all kind of hanging out because the President was going to walk the one hundred and fifty yards between the two buildings to come and visit Stephen Mnushan at the building and Secret Services marching through, the dogs, the guns, everyone's
marching through. And there was a tweet I think that Trump said, well, there's going to be a report that Mnusi and his team are going to put out on what our tax policy plan is going to be, and they had no idea. I was standing next to a senior Treasury official and I showed him the story, and he raises eyebrows and leans over to his colleague and was like, we have to put a plan together. So that's the kind of thing that's going to happen.
He has prioritized getting this country's fiscal house in order. That's going to run headlong into some of the policy priorities of the President lact namely extending these tax cuts that expire soon.
Yeah, we are seeing a lot of signs that markets are interested in Washington reigning in budget deficits, and globally, you know, deficits are really high, and so it's a global problem. But the US is the world's largest economy and the owner of the world's all the safe haven assets like treasuries and the dollar, and so it has a bit more impact and influence on how things shake out.
And so we are seeing that bond yields are testing limits, psychological limits, and part of the complex calculus of why that is happening includes concern about the country's fiscal trajectory. Now this is an age old thing in Washington. For decades, people talk about, yes, it's important cut the deficit. In when Democrats have the White House and all of Congress, nothing happens, and when Republicans have White House and all
of Congress, nothing happens. The only way that historically that we've seen Washington pay attention to that problem is when markets throw a tantrum, and that happened in the nineteen nineties,
and we may be seeing it happen again. And so Bessant has spoken about that publicly throughout twenty twenty four, about the importance of addressing the budget deficit problem, and he is We expect him to actually continue something from the first Trump term that then the Biden administration adopted, and that is bringing economic policy and national security, tying
those closely together. And that might be one way into making sure the deficit problem is solved because it's a matter of national security to make sure that the global financial system and US markets function well.
You mentioned you spoke with other people who know Scott Besson and how he works. What do they say about if he's going to succeed here, if he's going to be able to toe this fine line, walk that tightrope, as you said, between exuding calm, pleasing Wall Street, and also pleasing this president.
The expectation is that Besant will be able to navigate it. There are always trip ups, and as reporters, we all
love to write about those. There's always a moment where any treasure secretary, from Bob Rubin to Tim Geitner to Hank Paulson, you name it, Steven Mnush and Janet Allen, there's a moment where their words, because they can move markets, they matter so much, and each nuance and the phrasing matters so much that they trip up and markets move when they weren't supposed to, and those little trip ups
will happen. I think the best thing to do is to look at a secretary or any policymaker's entire tenure to see how they did, rather than just isolating one or two cases. So far as signs point to Bessant being a stable hand the way Steven Mnush was.
But let's see Kaliah. Thank you absolutely. This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura. This episode was produced by Alex tie. It was edited by Aaron Edwards and Chris Ansi. It was fact checked by Adriana Tapia. Mixed and sound designed by Alex Segura. Our senior producer is Naomi Shaven. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Our executive producer is Nicole Beamster borg Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's
head of podcasts. If you liked this episode, make sure to subscribe and review The Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps people find the show. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow