History remembers Gen Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the allied forces in Europe during the second world war, for his role in the D-day invasion of Normandy. Whether Scott Bessent will achieve similar posterity as the face of the “economic D-day” in Iran remains to be seen. The US treasury secretary, already trying to manage a $40tn national debt pile, this week took charge of Donald Trump’s effort to reverse-engineer his war of choice.
Whereas the US would typically take on an adversary with diplomacy, sanctions and military force, in that order, the US president started with a six-month bombing campaign and now hopes that economic isolation can finish the job. The effort shines a harsh spotlight on Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund manager and former Democratic donor who the president likes to say is “central casting” but critics warn is dangerously out of his depth. The coming months could reveal whether Bessent serves as a constraint on Trump’s worst impulses – or, in fact, enables them beneath a veneer of respectability.
He is inept, he is incompetent, he is dishonest, he is smug, he is craven.” Scott Kenneth Homer Bessent is an unlikely avatar of the Make America Great Again (Maga) movement. Born in South Carolina, he made his way to Yale and graduated in 1984. Openly gay, in 2015 he told the Yale Alumni magazine: “If you had told me in 1984, when we graduated, and people were dying of Aids, that 30 years later I’d be legally married and we would have two children via surrogacy, I wouldn’t have believed you.” Bessent went on to play an influential role in the liberal philanthropist George Soros’s London investment operations, including his famous 1992 bet against the pound, which generated huge profits on “Black Wednesday”, when the pound was delinked from European currencies.
He also donated to various Democratic causes in the early 2000s, notably Al Gore’s presidential run, but eventually drifted toward the Republican fold, transforming into an adviser and intellectual defender of Trump’s economic nationalism. He championed spending cuts while vigorously advocating for the extension of the tax cuts approved by Congress in Trump’s first term. Still, in a cabinet of questionable qualifications, there were hopes that Bessent – an advocate for deficit reduction and deregulation – would prove a moderating influence on Trump.
Last year the Senate confirmed him as treasury secretary by a vote of 68 to 29, with those in favour including some Democrats and independents. Bessent was hailed as the first openly gay treasury secretary in US history. It has been far from smooth sailing.
With the national debt ticking past $40tn, the bond markets have begun to rebel. Yields on long-dated treasury bonds have soared to heights not seen in nearly 20 years, dramatically escalating the cost of servicing the nation’s debt. Earlier this month, Bessent carried out the first joint intervention in the Japanese yen in 15 years to support currency stability.
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