Will a Soros protégé become Trump's Treasury Secretary?

Source: Forbes

Trump's new ruling team has taken shape, but the biggest variable is still who will be the crucial Treasury Secretary.

Bessant is a student of hedge fund tycoon George Soros and now fully supports Trump. Let's meet this important person who may become the key figure in controlling the direction of US economic development.

Original title: "Scott Bessant Emerges as a Possible Candidate for US Treasury Secretary"

In 2006, 32-year-old investment analyst Lee Morgan was about to move to Australia to start a new job, so he prepared to sublet his apartment in the West Village. He recalled that the first person who came to see the house was a "weird" man who asked him a long list of questions: Can I install bookshelves on the wall? Can I invite friends to my house? "If my mother comes to see me, we will sleep in the same bed." The man said, and Morgan became more and more confused. "She's standing outside now."

The person outside the door couldn't help laughing. That man was Morgan’s former boss, Scott Bessent.

“He hired an actor to play pranks on me,” Morgan recalled. “He was very witty and funny, but his sense of humor could be a little weird.” After six weeks in Australia, Morgan returned home and joined Bessent’s new hedge fund company, where he worked for two and a half years.

“He can associate and make connections quickly, and he has an incredible sense of humor,” said another person who worked closely with Bessent. “That’s his huge advantage, allowing him to use humor to defuse problems in all kinds of situations.”

Today, Bessent has become a popular candidate for the Trump administration’s nomination for U.S. Treasury Secretary. (He and Howard Lutnick are considered the strongest contenders for the position.)

If nominated and confirmed by the Senate, Bessent will be expected to be responsible for formulating and advising financial, economic and tax policies, becoming one of the key decision-makers in the world’s largest economy.

Charm, wit and a “brilliant” macroeconomic mind fueled Bessant’s rise on Wall Street and are now fueling his rise in politics. Trump once called him “very good-looking and one of the best on Wall Street.”

Born in South Carolina, Bessant, 62, has built relationships over the years with some of the world’s wealthiest investors and most influential policymakers.

He’s known everyone from liberal billionaire George Soros (for whom he worked twice) to one of Saudi Arabia’s wealthiest families to the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Former colleagues at various stages of his career praise his investment acumen, but also mention his hard-boiled Wall Street style. "He seems a little reserved and even-keeled, but he's also tough," said a person who worked with him at Soros Fund Management. "He won't tolerate stupidity."

"He's an extremely calm, unemotional guy," said a former Soros employee. "We've been involved in deals that took 12 to 16 months. If things change at the last minute, Scott's mind changes. He has the ability to walk away."

Bessant has known Trump for years.

Bessant is good friends with Blaine Trump, the wife of Trump's late brother Robert Trump, according to Morgan. Bessant donated $1 million to Trump's 2016 inaugural committee and has fully supported him in this election. He has participated in Trump's campaign rallies and become a key economic adviser, and has donated $3 million to support Trump and other Republican candidates and committees.

Bessant’s ability to read and play to the minds of his listeners has made him a rising star in the Trump universe. “(Trump) is very insightful on economic policy,” Bessant told Forbes in a phone interview on the eve of the election. He was preparing to leave the Yale Club and fly to Pittsburgh and Grand Rapids for the last two rallies of the Trump campaign. “He has a lot to talk about.”

Now Bessant has a lot to talk about. “I’ve been pretty low-key for most of my life,” he said in a phone interview about the US economic woes. One of his biggest concerns is government spending. “We’ve never had a budget deficit this high in a non-recession or non-war period.”

Bessant worked for George Soros twice, in the 1990s and 2010s, a relationship that has caused concern among some Trump supporters. Soros, 94, is a major Democratic donor and supporter of left-wing causes and the target of many right-wing conspiracy theories. Last year, a user on X said that "Soros led" the "invasion" of Europe by North African immigrants, and Elon Musk, now an adviser to Trump, echoed that Soros wanted to "erode the foundations of civilization" and accused him of "nothing more than destroying Western civilization." When Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg prosecuted Trump in 2023, many Republicans, including J. D. Vance, claimed that Bragg was "bought" by Soros. (Soros had donated to a progressive criminal justice reform organization, which then funded Bragg's campaign.)

"He is one of the few people who is not afraid of (Soros)," said a person who reported to Bessant. "I think the two of them are a pretty powerful combination." Others declined to discuss Bessant's relationship with Soros.

Compared to some of Trump's hardcore MAGA supporters, Bessant has taken a more moderate path.

Currently, he lives in South Carolina with his husband of 13 years and their two children. Born in a small river town in South Carolina, he got his first job at the age of nine and then completed his studies at Yale University with three part-time jobs, but still owed $24,000 in loans. He originally planned to become a journalist, but after failing to become the editor-in-chief of the Yale Daily News, he began to consider other careers. One day, he saw a job advertisement at the career center: Jim Rogers, a well-known fund manager and alumnus in New York City, was looking for an intern. "He even offered to sleep on the sofa in the office, which was crucial for me at the time," he recalled in an interview with Yale Alumni Magazine in 2015.

Bessant later returned to his alma mater to teach financial history courses to undergraduates. His courses include "Financial Boom and Depression in the 20th Century" and "Hedge Funds: History, Theory and Practice".

Bessant, who has lived and worked in the two major financial centers of London and New York for many years, supported Al Gore's presidential campaign in 1999 and donated $25,000 to Hillary Clinton's political action committee in 2013.

“When I knew him, he was a liberal, supportive of Democratic causes,” recalls Andy Pollina, who worked with Bessent Capital for two years in the early 2000s.

Marlene Jupiter became friends with Bessent in the late 1980s. She was selling options and derivatives at investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, and Bessent was a junior trader at the Saudi family-owned Olayan Group, one of Jupiter’s clients.

Jupiter said Bessent had always held conservative views, but was a “moderate, moderate New York thinker who was fiscally conservative.” Years later, when Jupiter filed an arbitration against the New York Stock Exchange over allegations that her former employer, Donaldson, had defamed her against a potential employer, Bessent testified on her behalf. “He stood up for me and supported me,” she recalls.  

In 1991, Bessant joined Soros Fund Management's London office, in what appears to be the role of global head of research.

He allegedly played a behind-the-scenes role in one of Wall Street's most famous trades the following year: Soros's shorting of the pound. The trade rocked British financial markets and earned Soros Fund $1.5 billion in just one month. "Scott was in London. He told me, 'There's a big problem with the housing market in London. We think the UK economy is going down,'" recalled billionaire hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller, who was one of the key architects of the deal and spoke about it in a podcast from the Norwegian central bank earlier this month.

"Scott learned from Stanley Druckenmiller," said an analyst who once worked for Bessant. “He likes to make big bets with controlled risk.”

In 2000, Bessant struck out on his own, founding Bessant Capital with $200 million in seed money from Soros. However, he failed to replicate his past success on his own.

“Most of the fund was gone [by 2002],” recalls former colleague Polina, who notes that the hedge fund market was going through a “tough time.” Bessant Capital closed in 2006 and returned the money to outside investors.

After a brief stint at hedge fund manager Protege Partners, Bessant returned to Soros Fund Management as chief investment officer in 2011. Immediately after his return, he struck another historic currency trade with Soros and made another fortune: shorting the yen. They also met with then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

One of the insiders said, "In 2011, George and Scott met with Abe, and the two of them provided advice to Abe, and Abe also revealed to them the policy content of what was later called 'Abenomics. He is an academic person, but he also understands how the real world works."

"He is very respected in the trading and policy circles, and even policymakers are willing to communicate with him," said another former colleague. "They all want to hear his views."

In 2017, Bessant left the Soros Fund again and founded Key Square Capital, which was also supported by Soros and received a start-up investment of up to $2 billion from him. According to Bloomberg, Bessant eventually returned "most of" the funds in 2018, and the fund has shrunk from a peak of $4.5 billion to less than $600 million today.

Now, Bessant is preparing to open a new chapter.

He recently praised Trump, who may become his boss, on the Fox News program "Fox and Friends", calling him "the most insightful leader in economics" he has ever met, and predicted that the next four years will be a golden era. "We can revive manufacturing. We can achieve energy dominance. We will also usher in a technological boom," Bessant said enthusiastically. "I have had a fulfilling career, and it would be great if I had the opportunity to give back to the country with my life's learning."

By praising Trump so much, Bessant is obviously taking the initiative and is determined to win. However, doing so may backfire. The Wall Street Journal reported last Friday that Bessant and his rival Howard Lutnick's hard lobbying annoyed Trump. As a result, there is one more candidate for Treasury Secretary: Fox Business Network host Larry Kudlow.

One thing is certain: everything is not settled yet, and Trump may still make unexpected moves.