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    Who will Trump choose for Treasury? What you need to know about the candidates

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    President-elect Donald Trump has made his picks for his next secretary of state, secretary of defense and attorney general, but he has yet to announce one of the most crucial cabinet roles: treasury secretary.

    Whoever Trump chooses would take over a high-level Cabinet position charged with advising the president on matters related to financial, economic and fiscal policy. They will have to be confirmed by the Senate before they can take the central position.

    Trump’s 2024 re-election campaign was about lowering prices and making other economic promises to the American people. The president-elect has dubbed himself “Tariff Man” and said he plans to impose tariffs of up to 20% on all imported goods and additional tariffs of 60% to 100% on goods from China.

    The idea is to drive up the price of imports to make American-made products more attractive. Trump’s plans have been heralded by a number of domestic manufacturers competing with cheap goods from other countries, but economists warn tariffs could be a double-edged sword by driving up inflation and interest rates.

    Many of these economists have warned that tariffs could hurt the economy by raising costs and reducing production. It also leaves open the possibility that trading partners could retaliate with their own tariffs.

    However, most of Trump’s Treasury secretary nominees have long supported tariffs or say they have supported them since the election.

    Here are some of the candidates creating buzz:

    Scott Bessent

    Scott Bessent, 62, is the CEO of Key Square Capital Management, a Connecticut-based hedge fund. Previously, he was Chief Investment Officer for Soros Fund Management, founded by George Soros, a long-time supporter of progressive and liberal political causes.

    Bessent, a leading Trump fundraiser, is a champion of the president-elect’s economic deregulation policies, increasing domestic energy production and tax cuts.

    During his campaign, Trump repeatedly said he would push to expand drilling, further increase already record-breaking oil and gas production and cut corporate tax rates. He also tapped Tesla owner Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new initiative called the Department of Government Efficiency.

    In a recent Fox News column, Bessent offered his full support for tariffs, arguing that the tools “can increase revenues for the Treasury, encourage companies to restore production and reduce our dependence on industrial production from strategic rivals.”

    The hedge fund manager is known to cross party lines. He hosted a fundraiser for then-Vice President Al Gore when he ran for president in 2000.

    Bessent is a longtime resident of New York City and now lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with his husband John Freeman, a former New York City prosecutor. The couple has two children.

    Howard Lutnick

    Howard Lutnick, 63, is a Wall Street billionaire and a key Trump ally. He has already worked with Linda McMahon, co-chair of the Trump transition team, to help the new president prepare to fill some 4,000 political positions in the federal government.

    Lutnick, a longtime friend of Trump, has said he agrees with the president-elect’s policies on immigration, cryptocurrency and tariffs on imported goods.

    The immigration crackdown was the centerpiece of Trump’s re-election bid. Trump also embraced digital assets during his campaign, promising to make the United States the “crypto capital of the planet.”

    Lutnick, born to a Jewish family in Jericho, New York, said he agreed to take a more active role in Trump’s campaign after Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Trump, he said, showed “moral clarity” when it came to Israel.

    Although the former president has sometimes been critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he has said without evidence that the war between Israel and Hamas would not have taken place under his watch.

    Lutnick joined Cantor Fitzgerald, a major financial services company, after graduating from college in 1983 and rose to president and CEO in 1996. The company’s offices, located in One World Trade Center, were destroyed during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The attack killed 658 employees of Lutnick, including his then 36-year-old brother Gary.

    Johannes Paulson

    John Paulson is a billionaire hedge fund manager who gained the world’s attention and a $4 billion fortune when he gambled on the U.S. housing market during the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis.

    Like Trump, Paulson, 68, was born in Queens, New York. After starting his career at Boston Consulting Group, Paulson founded his own hedge fund, Paulson & Co, in 1994.

    An outspoken advocate of Trump’s economic agenda, and especially his plan for tariffs in an effort to boost U.S. manufacturing, Paulson told CNBC in September that the plan was “well founded.”

    “What Trump wants to do is create an American manufacturing power and use tariffs as a way to level the playing field,” he said.

    Paulson has also called for the privatization of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that guarantee most U.S. mortgages. Until the 2008 financial crisis, the two entities were private companies. But they were placed under full federal control after receiving a government bailout.

    Paulson, a major investor in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, could make serious profits if the companies were returned to the private sector.

    Robert Lichthizer

    Robert Lighthizer, an international trade lawyer, was the U.S. trade representative in Trump’s first administration.

    The U.S. Trade Representative is a member of the Cabinet and serves as the President’s chief trade advisor, negotiator, and spokesperson on trade issues.

    Lighthizer, 77, is often described as a “protectionist” because of his criticism of free trade. He blames free trade for the loss of American manufacturing jobs in recent decades.

    During his time in the Trump administration, he played a central role in renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada and has been described as the architect of the US trade war with China.

    In an August 2020 article in the magazine Foreign Affairs, Lighthizer, who also served as deputy trade representative in the Reagan administration, laid out his philosophy on trade policy:

    Economic efficiency, maximizing production and geopolitical goals, he argued, should not be the only factors taken into account in trade policy. Instead, leaders should also consider factors such as job losses in the US

    “When it comes to taxes, health care, environmental regulations and other issues, policymakers routinely balance efficiency with other competing goals,” he wrote. “They should do the same for trade.”

    Kevin Warsh

    Kevin Warsh, banker and former member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, is currently a Shepard Family Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Economics at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a Dean’s Visiting Scholar and lecturer at the Graduate School of Business.

    He began his career at Morgan Stanley in 1995 and rose to vice president and executive director of the Mergers and Acquisitions practice. In 2002, he was asked to serve as special assistant for economic policy to then-President George W. Bush and as executive secretary of the National Economic Council.

    In 2006, he was appointed by Bush to the central bank, a position he held until 2011. During his term, Warsh served as a representative of the Board of Governors to the international organization the Group of Twenty, as well as envoy to emerging and advanced economies in the United States. Asia, according to the Federal Reserve.

    There are indications that Warsh may not fully support Trump’s “America First” economic agenda, based on a 2011 op-ed he co-wrote with Jeb Bush that said policymakers should “resist the rising tide of economic protectionism” if they come closer. according to Bloomberg, the country’s financial challenges.

    Warsh, 54, a native of Albany, New York, graduated with a degree in public policy from Stanford University and went on to earn a law degree from Harvard University.

    Marc Rowan

    Marc Rowan, a billionaire investor and co-founder and CEO of Apollo Global Management, is another candidate for Treasury Secretary.

    Rowan, 62, grew up on Long Island, New York, graduated with a BS and MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and began his career in investment banking.

    After the company he worked for went bankrupt in 1990, he and two colleagues from his old company co-founded Apollo Global Management, a financial services company. As of October, Apollo Global Management had $696 billion in assets under management.

    Rowan currently chairs the Board of Advisors and is an initial funder and contributor to the development of the Penn Wharton Budget Model, a nonpartisan research initiative that provides analysis of the fiscal impact of public policy, according to his biography on his company’s website .

    Last week, he praised the team Trump was assembling for his second administration and said the country needed “wholesale change,” with specific praise for Musk’s important role in the next Trump administration.

    “I think Elon Musk represents large-scale change, and I think we actually need large-scale change,” Rowan said at Yahoo Finance’s Invest conference last week.

    Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House correspondent for USA TODAY. You can follow her on X @SwapnaVenugopal

    Contributors: Bailey Schulz, Trevor Hughes; Reuters

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