{"id":819318,"date":"2025-01-12T11:12:02","date_gmt":"2025-01-12T17:12:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/12\/scott-bessent-trumps-billionaire-treasury-pick-will-shed-assets-to-avoid-conflicts\/"},"modified":"2025-01-12T11:12:02","modified_gmt":"2025-01-12T17:12:02","slug":"scott-bessent-trumps-billionaire-treasury-pick-will-shed-assets-to-avoid-conflicts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/12\/scott-bessent-trumps-billionaire-treasury-pick-will-shed-assets-to-avoid-conflicts\/","title":{"rendered":"Scott Bessent, Trump\u2019s Billionaire Treasury Pick, Will Shed Assets to Avoid Conflicts"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Financial disclosure forms show hundreds of millions of assets including property in the Bahamas and investments in Bitcoin and bets against China\u2019s currency.<\/p>\n

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Scott Bessent, center, is President-elect Donald J. Trump\u2019s pick for Treasury secretary. Mr. Bessent pledged to divest many of his financial holdings if confirmed to the post.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

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Scott Bessent, the billionaire hedge fund manager whom President-elect Donald J. Trump picked to be his Treasury secretary<\/a>, plans to divest from dozens of funds, trusts and investments in preparation to become the nation\u2019s top economic policymaker.<\/p>\n

Those plans were released on Saturday along with the publication of an ethics agreement and financial disclosures that Mr. Bessent submitted ahead of his Senate confirmation hearing next Thursday.<\/p>\n

The documents show the extent of the wealth of Mr. Bessent, whose assets and investments appear to be worth in excess of $700 million. Mr. Bessent was formerly the top investor for the billionaire liberal philanthropist George Soros<\/a> and has been a major Republican donor and adviser to Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n

If confirmed as Treasury secretary, Mr. Bessent, 62, will steer Mr. Trump\u2019s economic agenda of cutting taxes, rolling back regulations and imposing tariffs as he seeks to renegotiate trade deals. He will also play a central role in the Trump administration\u2019s expected embrace of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Although Mr. Trump won the election by appealing to working-class voters who have been dogged by high prices, he has turned to wealthy Wall Street investors<\/a> such as Mr. Bessent and Howard Lutnick, a billionaire banker whom he tapped to be commerce secretary, to lead his economic team. Linda McMahon, another billionaire, has been picked as education secretary, and Elon Musk, the world\u2019s richest man, is leading an unofficial agency known as the Department of Government Efficiency.<\/p>\n

In a letter to the Treasury Department\u2019s ethics office, Mr. Bessent outlined the steps he would take to \u201cavoid any actual or apparent conflict of interest in the event that I am confirmed for the position of secretary of the Department of Treasury.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Alan Rappeport Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. Financial disclosure forms show hundreds of millions of assets including property in the Bahamas and investments in Bitcoin and bets against China\u2019s currency. Scott Bessent, center, is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":819319,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140864,596],"tags":[11476],"class_list":{"0":"post-819318","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bessent","8":"category-scott","9":"tag-bitcoins"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}