Donald Trump picks hedge fund manager Scott Bessent for Treasury secretary

President-elect Donald Trump said Friday he has tapped Scott Bessent, a former Soros Fund Management chief investment officer, to serve as Treasury secretary.

"Scott has long been a strong advocate of the America First Agenda," said Trump in a statement. "On the eve of our Great Country’s 250th Anniversary, 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."

Trump added that Bessent would also help maintain the U.S. Dollar as the "Reserve Currency of the World."

"Unlike in past Administrations, we will ensure that no Americans will be left behind in the next and Greatest Economic Boom, and Scott will lead that effort for me, and the Great People of the United States of America," said Trump.

In picking Bessent, Trump - despite his anti-establishment rhetoric - chose a less ideological, more conventional financier for the post.

A Yale graduate, Bessent, 62, has supported Trump’s economic policy of deregulation, increasing domestic energy production and tax cuts.

If confirmed by the Senate, Bessent would take over a high-level Cabinet position charged with advising the president on matters related to financial, economic and tax policy.

The hedge fund manager, who founded Key Square Capital Management in 2015, has been known to cross party lines. He hosted a fundraiser for then-Vice President Al Gore when he was running for president in 2000.

A longtime New York City resident, he now lives in Charleston, South Carolina, in a restored Greek Revival mansion with his husband John Freeman, a former New York City prosecutor. The couple has two children.

Bessent is a member of the French Huguenot Church of Charleston, where his family were founding members in the 1680s, according to the statement from Trump.

Bessent once aspired to be a journalist. He told the Yale Alumni Magazine in 2015 that after he failed to secure a position as editor of the Yale Daily News, he locked himself in a room for a month, only coming out for meals and class.

The following semester, he met Jim Rogers, a well-known money manager in New York City, who offered him an internship.

Bessent drew parallels between the world of money management and journalism, telling the magazine: “A lot of what you do is the same kind of research you do in journalism,” he said. “My approach is to start with an abstract concept and then look at the empirical data, as a good journalist would do.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Hedge fund manager Scott Bessent picked as Treasury secretary