Wall Street veteran Scott Bessent is nominated to be Trump’s treasurer, and he couldn’t be more different from Rachel Reeves!

The contrast between the resumes of President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and Chancellor Rachel Reeves could not be starker.

Bessent is a seasoned Wall Street figure with experience making the right decisions in the global economy.

Reeves has a limited and controversial history of working in the private sector at the failed consumer bank HBOS, which was taken over by Lloyds at the height of the great financial crisis of 2008.

Amid Trump’s rich array of Cabinet choices, the selection of Bessent, 62, is one of the least likely to bother evaluators when it comes to confirmation hearings.

Bessent actively campaigned for Trump’s election and was a donor to his campaign. His credentials for America’s top financial job are seen in Washington as more similar to those of other established Wall Street figures who have held that position.

This cast list includes such luminaries as Robert Rubin, who served under Bill Clinton, and Hank Paulson, who helped lead George W. Bush’s White House through the great financial crisis.

Bessent has been praised by some global analysts as the next James Baker. He was the majestic Texan lawyer who revived the Group of Five, which would later become the G7 with the incorporation of Canada and Italy, as a steering group of the most prosperous democracies in the world.

Markets have generally welcomed the choice of Bessent. Shares of companies involved in global trade rallied on the grounds that he understands international trade, isn’t too keen on tariffs and has developed relationships with key finance ministries such as that of Japan, the world’s third-largest economy. world.

His less assertive view of tariffs may not coincide with the president-elect’s determination to impose a 25 percent trade tariff on Mexico and Canada and a 60 percent tariff on China.

Bessent is openly gay. He was educated at the Ivy League Yale College, where he studied political science. His career and reputation are built on his years as a macro hedge fund manager.

These financiers specialize in taking large positions in the forex and stock markets based on geoeconomic and political trends.

He first came to public attention as a lieutenant to George Soros, who helped devise a betting strategy against Britain and the Bank of England when it was kicked out of the exchange rate mechanism (ERM), the precursor to the eurozone, in October. of 1992.

Bessent made a similar bet against sterling in 2016, before the surprise referendum result that saw Britain leave the European Union.

His deep knowledge of the United Kingdom, its politics and its economic upheavals could make him a difficult intercessor for Reeves.

The Chancellor has long regarded current Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen as a role model and heroine featured in her controversial book The Women Who Made the Modern Economy.

Reeves insisted on summoning Yellen to Washington for IMF meetings in October, just days before his £40bn tax rise budget.

At the center of Bessent’s known thinking is what he has publicly described as the ‘3-3-3’ plan.

The goal is to achieve 3 percent annual growth for the U.S. economy, reduce the budget deficit to 3 percent of total production, and increase domestic oil production by 3 million barrels.

The Treasury candidate is less definitive on tariffs. He has suggested that Trump’s proposals are a ‘maximalist’ and negotiating strategy, as the president-elect describes in his book The Art Of The Deal.

Bessent has also been skeptical of Trump’s suggestion that companies that make products for the American market in the United States could pay a lower corporate tax rate of 15 percent.

The would-be US Treasury chief has suggested this could be difficult because it could violate international tax agreements.

Bessent could probably learn from the playbook of US Treasury Secretary during Trump’s first term, former Goldman Sachs banker Steven Mnuchin.

He managed to dissuade Trump from making the toughest trade decisions and sought to calm markets when the White House ignored the advice of the US Treasury.

Most of Bessent’s trading life has been spent in hedge funds. After Yale, he joined Soros partner Jim Rogers as an intern and spent most of the 1990s working at Soros Fund Management.

His own fund, Key Square Capital Management, has a mixed track record and there has been a steady outflow of funds.

But in 2024 he called it correctly, noting that political and economic analysts were too negative about a Trump victory and what it would mean for the economy.

He made big bets that stocks and the dollar would rise after November 5th. As a result, his funds have seen double-digit gains this year.

As Britain knows to its chagrin, the US Treasury nominee has an uncanny eye for market discrepancies. He was an early supporter of Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who resigned in 2020.

Abe stood out for his three arrows: expansionary monetary policy, tight fiscal policy, and an aggressive growth goal. This may well reflect Bessent’s strategy for the United States, unless it is distracted by trade wars.

Bessent inherits a rapidly growing US economy driven by the high productivity of its technology sector.

Unlike Reeves and the UK, it is unlikely to threaten economic expansion by increasing the tax burden on businesses and wealth creators.