WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday that he will nominate hedge fund manager Scott Bessent advocates deficit reductionto serve as his next Secretary of the Treasury.

Trump also said he would nominate Russell Vought to head the Office of Management and Budget, a position Vought held during Trump’s first presidency. Vought was heavily involved Project 2025a conservative blueprint for Trump’s second term that he tried to distance himself from during the campaign.

Friday evening’s announcements showed how Trump was shaping the financial side of his new administration. While Bessent is closely tied to Wall Street and could earn bipartisan support, Vought is known as a Republican hardliner.

Trump said Bessent would “help usher in a new Golden Age for the United States,” while Vought “knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end the gun-toting government.”

In a separate announcement, Trump said he had chosen Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a Republican from Oregon, as his labor secretary.

“I look forward to working with her to create great opportunities for American workers,” Trump said in a statement.

Bessent, 62, is the founder of hedge fund Key Square Capital Management, having worked for Soros Fund Management on and off since 1991. If confirmed by the Senate, he would be the nation’s first openly gay treasury secretary.

He told Bloomberg in August that he decided to join Trump’s campaign in part to tackle the rising US national debt. That would include cutting government programs and other spending.

“This election cycle is the last chance for the US to grow out of this debt mountain without becoming some kind of European-style socialist democracy,” he said at the time.

From November 8 the national debt is $35.94 trillionto which both the Trump and Biden administrations have added. Trump’s policies have increased the national debt by $8.4 trillion, while the Biden administration has increased the national debt by $4.3 trillion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a budget watchdog.

While pushing to reduce the national debt by halting spending, Bessent supports extending the provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which Trump signed into law in his first year in office. Estimates from various economic analyzes of the costs of the various tax cuts range from nearly $6 trillion to $10 trillion over ten years. Almost all provisions of the law expire at the end of 2025.

Before becoming a donor and adviser to Trump, Bessent donated to various Democratic causes in the early 2000s, most notably during Al Gore’s presidential campaign. He also worked for George Soros, a strong supporter of the Democrats. Bessent played an influential role in Soros’ activities in London, including his famous 1992 bet against the pound, which generated huge profits on “Black Wednesday,” when the pound was delinked from the European currency.

Bessent’s choice was not surprising; he was one of the names put forward for the role of finance minister. At one October Detroit Economic Club Event, Trump called Bessent “one of the top analysts on Wall Street.”

Bessent told Bloomberg in August that he views tariffs as a “one-time price adjustment” and “not inflationary,” and that tariffs imposed during a second Trump administration would mainly target China. And he wrote in a Fox News op-ed this week that tariffs are “a useful tool to achieve the president’s foreign policy goals. Whether it’s pushing allies to spend more on their own defense, opening foreign markets to U.S. exports, securing cooperation in ending illegal immigration and banning the fentanyl trade, or deterring of military aggression: tariffs can play a central role.”

When asked whether Trump’s massive deportation operation would be paid for with tariffs, Bessent told Fox News earlier this month that he had been working on a plan for what he called “financial deportations,” explaining that he would slow down the flow of remittances to the homelands of would restrict migrants.

Bessent has also floated ideas on how the Trump administration could put pressure on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, whose term ends in May 2026. Last month, Bessent suggested that Trump could appoint a replacement chairman early, leaving that person to function as a “shadow.” chairman, with the aim of effectively sidelining Powell.

But after the election, Bessent reportedly backed away from that plan. Powell, for his part, has said he would not resign if Trump asked him to, adding that Trump as president does not have the authority to fire him.

Trump repeatedly attacked Powell during his first term as president for raising the Fed’s policy rate in 2017 and 2018. During the 2024 campaign, he said that as president he should have “a say” in the central bank’s interest rate decisions. Presidents traditionally avoid commenting on Fed policy.

Bessent and his husband, former New York City prosecutor John Freeman, married in 2011 and have two children.

Vought, 48, served as head of the Office of Management and Budget from mid-2020 until the end of Trump’s first term in 2021, having previously served as acting director and deputy director. A graduate of Wheaton College and George Washington University Law School, he had a deep knowledge of public finance, coupled with his own Christian faith.

After Trump’s first term ended, Vought founded the Center for Renewing America, a think tank that describes its mission as renewing “a consensus on America as a nation under God.”

The Center for Renewing America has released its own 2023 budget proposal, titled “A Commitment to End Work and Weaponized Government.” The proposal called for $11.3 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years and about $2 trillion in income tax cuts to bring the budget into surplus by 2032.

“The immediate threat facing the nation is the fact that the people no longer rule the country; instead, the government itself is increasingly weaponized against the people it is meant to serve,” Vought wrote in the introduction.

Vought also previously served as executive and budget director for the Republican Study Committee, a caucus for conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives. He also worked at Heritage Action, the political group affiliated with The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Vought’s proposed budget plan would cut spending on food assistance through the Department of Agriculture. There would be $3.3 trillion in cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services, largely due to the way Medicaid and Medicare funds are distributed. It also includes about $642 billion in cuts to the Affordable Care Act. The budgets for the departments of Housing and Urban Development and Education would also be cut.

Vought’s budget ideas were independent of Trump, who has not fully developed the details of his economic plans beyond campaigning for income tax cuts and rate increases. __

Associated Press writer Josh Book contributed to this report.