President-elect Donald Trump on Friday picked hedge fund manager Scott Bessent for treasury secretary, despite critics' concerns that he isn't an ardent enough backer of tariffs. Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer was named to head the Labor Department, while Russ Vought, a co-author of Project 2025, was selected to run the Office of Management and Budget.
Trump also was considering former Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia to be agriculture secretary. A source said she went to Mar-a-Lago on Friday. Kelly Loeffler is a Georgia businesswoman who grew up in an Illinois farming family and served one year in the Senate in 2020.
Loeffler is married to Jeff Sprecher, who is founder, chair and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange Inc. (ICE), which operates the New York Stock Exchange and other markets. She previously was CEO of Bakkt, a crypto platform founded by ICE that has reportedly been in talks to be acquired by Trump Media and Technology Group.
Bessent, founder of investment firm Key Square Capital and an economic adviser to the Trump campaign, championed Trump’s economic plans on the campaign trail and defended the use of tariffs as a revenue-raising and foreign policy tool.
But Bessent has also argued that a minimum tariff of 60% on Chinese goods, as Trump has proposed, could serve as the opening of a “maximalist negotiating position,” echoing a view expressed by Howard Lutnick – Trump’s pick for Commerce Secretary – and spurring accusations from critics that he lacks the necessary tariff enthusiasm to implement Trump’s economic agenda.
Elon Musk, who has been tapped to co-lead a panel dedicated to improving government efficiency, called Bessent the “business-as-usual choice” in a post on X, formerly Twitter, and pushed for Lutnick to be awarded the Treasury role.
As for Chavez-DeRemer, Trump said in his announcement that he "looked forward to working with her to create tremendous opportunity for American Workers, to expand Training and Apprenticeships, to grow wages and improve working conditions, to bring back our Manufacturing jobs. Together, we will achieve historic cooperation between Business and Labor that will restore the American Dream for Working Families."
Chavez-DeRemer, a member of the House Agriculture Committee who narrowly lost her re-election race in Oregon, served on a bipartisan task force that issued a series of recommendations earlier this year for dealing with the agricultural labor shortage. The recommendations included setting a federal heat standard that would give breaks to farmworkers so they can cool down when temperatures reach “heightened levels."
She is one of the most pro-union Republicans in the House and is a sponsor of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which would strengthen the power of unions.
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Vought's return to OMB, where he also served in the first Trump administration, could have far-reaching policy impacts. Vought argues that the executive branch has authority to cut off spending without approval from Congress.
“The great challenge confronting a conservative President is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch to return power— including power currently held by the executive branch—to the American people,” Vought wrote in Project 2025, the blueprint for the next administration developed by the Heritage Foundation.
“Success in meeting that challenge will require a rare combination of boldness and self-denial: boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will and self-denial to use the bureaucratic machine to send power away from Washington and back to America’s families, faith communities, local governments, and states.”
In a statement, Trump said Vought "has spent many years working in Public Policy in Washington, D.C., and is an aggressive cost cutter and deregulator who will help us implement our America First Agenda across all Agencies. Russ knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government, and he will help us return Self Governance to the People."
Bessent has pushed deregulation and tax cuts, key pillars of Trump’s economic agenda, advocating for both in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed in which he also railed against “reckless spending” under the Biden administration.
Bessent, who previously worked for Democratic donor George Soros, has also insisted that Trump would not pursue some of the more controversial economic policies linked to his campaign, telling the Financial Times last month that the incoming president would not weaken the dollar or interfere with the Federal Reserve Bank’s independence.
“Scott has long been a strong advocate of the America First Agenda,” Trump said according to a statement from his transition announcing Bessent’s nomination. He “will help me usher in a new Golden Age for the United States, as we fortify our position as the World’s leading Economy, Center of Innovation and Entrepreneurialism, Destination for Capital, while always, and without question, maintaining the U.S. Dollar as the Reserve Currency of the World.”
Trump added that his new cabinet pick will lead the effort to “ensure that no Americans will be left behind in the next and Greatest Economic Boom.”
Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., challenged the notion that Bessent and the next Trump administration would deliver an economic win for all Americans, however.
It “wouldn’t be a Trump Treasury Department without a rich political donor running the show. When it comes to the economy, the government under Trump is of, by, and for the ultra-wealthy,” Wyden said in a statement.
If confirmed to the position, Bessent would become the first openly gay treasury secretary.
