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After announcing a swathe of names for his Cabinet, president-elect Donald Trump appears to be conducting auditions for his Treasury Secretary.
Figures in the frame include Scott Bessent, the founder of Key Square Capital Management; Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald; Marc Rowan, the Apollo Global Management cofounder; and Kevin Warsh, a former governor of the Federal Reserve Board.
Here's some of the best commentary we've seen about the race to be the next Treasury Secretary.
President-elect Donald Trump's decision on a treasury secretary is about far more than whose name will be printed on America's money. The choice of how to fill his highest-profile outstanding Cabinet selection will be the clearest indication yet of how he intends to wield import tariffs in his new administration. The leading candidates for the role have expressed differing perspectives on how Trump should use the protectionist trade policies that he put front and center in his campaign for the White House, while Trump himself has offered seemingly contradictory views.
The sudden confusion has caused some queasiness among investors, who also have been nervous about rhetoric lately from Federal Reserve officials that has injected uncertainty into expectations for interest rate cuts. "We think concern over the Treasury pick was at least as important a driver of market weakness Thursday/Friday as the signal from Powell that the Fed is going to be more non-committal on its rate plans – which is itself a product of uncertainty over Trump policy," Evercore ISI analysts said in a note Monday. Stocks found some footing on Monday after the Trump trade rally was cut short last week.
Trump has told associates that he is impressed by Rowan, The Times reports. The president-elect tends to value wealth and status on Wall Street, and Rowan, a co-founder of Apollo who helped turn the firm into a $733 billion investment giant, has plenty of both. Rowan would be likely to reassure many on Wall Street, particularly given how unorthodox some of the other cabinet choices have been. But it's unclear whether he would want to take such a public role, especially given his current work at Apollo. (How hard it would be to extricate Rowan from any "key man" provisions in the firm's funds is another question.) Trump has a history with Warsh, having considered him as a potential Fed chair in 2017, only to choose Jay Powell instead, a choice he later publicly regretted. The TV-minded Trump considers Warsh smart and handsome, The Times reports. Warsh is also being mentioned as a potential successor to Powell, whose term expires in 2026. Whoever gets the nod will have to deal with Trump's insistence on new tariffs, a key campaign pledge. Among Lutnick's private criticisms of Bessent, according to reports, is that his rival hasn't expressed enough enthusiasm for them.
U.S. markets initially rallied on Trump's win. Markets began discounting Scott Bessent as U.S. Treasury Secretary. The moment Howard Lutnick decided he wanted the job, the markets sold off. The markets are telling Trump that Bessent is certainly the best choice for the position.
Unlike other policy positions, the Treasury Secretary needs an understanding of financial markets, which nowadays are global. A blowup in the foreign-exchange markets somewhere can affect the U.S. economy, and new financial investments like crypto need careful watching. Mr. Trump has promised to ease political control over these markets, but no one should think they are risk free. Blowups somewhere are inevitable, and a Treasury secretary needs the experience to deal with the fallout in a way that reassures markets.
There's going to be a serious look at Kevin Warsh and Marc Rowan. You've got what The New York Times is calling a 'knife fight' between Howard Lutnick and Scott Bessent. There could now be a contest for Treasury Secretary where … the no1 job is reassuring the markets. Trump likes pedigree and Trump is obsessed with the markets, and that's what I can see Kevin Warsh as a very strong candidate. He was the youngest Fed governor and he's someone that the markets love. The back-up job that may be offered to some of these candidates is director of the White House National Economic Council.
Trump's transition leaders remain enthusiastic and indeed strongly excited about the group they're putting together. And there's extraordinary confidence given the strength of Trump's win and the sweep of executive, house, and senate. But despite being a second term, there's no more experience being assembled on the cabinet than in the first administration (when, at least, there was awareness that the group didn't yet know what it was doing) and overall less competence, with experienced Washington politicians like Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz in the group but few operators who understand the mechanics of bureaucracy, all of which is unique compared to other second administrations that the United States has experienced historically. The unifying factor is a desire to undo what's seen as wrong with the status quo — whether any policy attached to the Biden administration, the "politicization" of the power ministries, or the "deep state" in the regulatory bureaucracies, which reflects the overall intention of taking a wrecking ball to Washington, a message president-elect Trump is happy to champion, but with little experience, understanding, or interest in what they want to build or reform the institutions into.
Decades later the fight for Mr Lutnick, now aged 63, is over the fate of America itself. The man in the ring is another big-city billionaire, Donald Trump. In this bout, Mr Lutnick is so far more of a towel boy, a cheerleader or a coach. Once a donor to Mr Trump, he is managing the president-elect's transition, filling roughly 4,000 government posts before the inauguration—the perfect role for someone who has described himself as "addicted to people". In return he might be rewarded with the job of treasury secretary. … Mr Lutnick has said he will judge prospective hires in the Trump administration by their capacity, as well as their "fidelity and loyalty…to the man". Mr Lutnick's most impressive talent is his ability to imbue staff with a sense of mission. But that is only as worthwhile as the quality of the staff and of the mission itself.
Other eccentric nominations surely lie ahead. More of the assorted kooks and grifters who amble into Trump's orbit may well be proposed for positions of national consequence. Republican senators, in particular newly elected Majority Leader John Thune, should be on the lookout for unqualified picks and prepared to reject them. Doing so would be both the honorable thing for the country and manifestly in their self-interest: Incompetence in high places will only impede their agenda.
We're in a protracted standoff right now over who Trump will pick for treasury secretary. I think it sounds boring to a lot of people but it's an absolutely crucial moment
1) From all my reporting, my sense is that Trump is dead serious about enormous tariff hikes to rebalance global trade. So he wants someone who will actually implement those tariffs.
2) But all the evidence also suggests he really wants the support of Wall Street and STONKS to go up. So he wants someone the markets will respect But it's really hard to see how he gets BOTH of those, which I think is part of why picking the treasury secretary is proving so hardThis helps explain why Scott Bessent, the Treasury contender who got characterized - maybe somewhat unfairly? - as door #2, has been jumping up and down the last week & insisting that he's really actually super serious about doing tariffs in a big way.
