Inside the bitter fight to become Donald Trump’s Treasury secretary

The richest man in the world tried to doom Scott Bessent’s bid to become Treasury secretary less than a week ago.

Last Saturday, the billionaire entrepreneur and Donald Trump confidant Elon Musk said the Wall Street investor’s appointment as Treasury secretary would amount to “business-as-usual”.

After Musk’s tweet on X, Bessent’s odds of getting the job on the prediction exchange Polymarket fell.

The following day the president-elect’s transition team opened up the search, homing in on three new candidates, Apollo Global chief Marc Rowan, former Federal Reserve official Kevin Warsh and Tennessee senator Bill Hagerty.

Rowan, who was in Hong Kong, cut his Asian trip short so he could be interviewed by Trump. He spoke at a conference on Tuesday alongside the chief executives of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, then boarded a private jet for an 18-hour flight so he could be at Trump’s estate at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday afternoon.

Hagerty, meanwhile, had travelled with Trump and Musk to the latest SpaceX launch in Texas, stoking speculation that he was emerging as the preferred nominee. This, just as Warsh, a rising star in Republican economic policymaking circles, was starting to emerge as Wall Street’s favoured pick.

But those three new candidacies were sideshows in the battle to win the top cabinet role running the world’s largest economy. By Friday, Trump had gone full circle, returning to Bessent, the South Carolinian hedge fund manager, as his choice.

Trump’s pick seemed to signal that he, not Musk or anyone else seeking influence over him, would make the big calls.

“Scott is widely respected as one of the world’s foremost international investors and geopolitical and economic strategists” and was “widely respected” the president-elect said. “He will help me usher in a new golden age for the United States”.

The infighting between the candidates for the Treasury job was extraordinarily bitter over just a few short days, making Bessent’s comeback all the more dramatic.

At one point, his critics began circulating via chat groups documents — seen by the Financial Times — purporting to show the poor performance of his Key Square Group hedge fund.

Others questioned Bessent’s close ties to George Soros, the liberal hedge fund veteran for whom he worked and later sought funding from to seed Key Square. Some, including Musk, threw their weight behind Howard Lutnick, a fellow Wall Street investor who co-led Trump’s transition team and had put his name forward for the Treasury role.

The Bessent camp retaliated by sharing a new set of documents — seen by the FT — asserting that Key Square had stellar returns, especially during the pandemic, an indication that the hedge fund manager had the skills to weather tough economic conditions.

As the rhetoric sharpened, some Republican donors and people involved in the selection process privately complained about Lutnick’s behaviour, arguing he was too brash and outspoken for a position that requires discipline in managing the markets. One person close to Trump went so far as to accuse Lutnick of “abusing his position to put his candidacy ahead of everybody else”.

That Trump was being so careful about his Treasury choice suggested a level of uncertainty that he had not shown in his other choices, which came in rapid succession after he won the election on November 5.

Trump knew that he could not afford a mis-step. He had to find a person wedded to the populist economic policies he championed on the campaign trail, including sweeping tariffs.

But he also needed someone he could trust to protect the metric he cared about most: the US stock market.

As he weighed the decision, Trump also withheld any nominations for other important economic posts, including director of the National Economic Council, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, commerce secretary and US trade representative.

But by Tuesday one piece of the puzzle had been solved. Lutnick would be commerce secretary, which has sweeping responsibilities, including over export controls. Trump said that Lutnick would also have oversight of USTR, the agency that runs US trade policy that normally has its own role in the cabinet. 

Sensing an opening, finance billionaires in Trump’s orbit lobbied for Rowan, with some texting their support of him directly to the president. Financial figures in Trump’s inner circle made pitches, too, as did a Trump family member.

People close to Rowan told the FT he was interested in taking the role and many executives inside Apollo began to believe he could leave the firm he had built into a $700bn-in-assets colossus.

The billionaire investor’s meeting with Trump went well on Wednesday, but Rowan also made it clear that while he was honoured to serve the incoming president, he would not be a yes man, said a person with knowledge of the matter. That independence probably hurt his candidacy, said a person close to him.

By Thursday it became clear that it would be a race between Warsh and Bessent. A free-trader with traditional views about the need for a strong US dollar and an independent Fed, Warsh was seen as a potential counterweight to some of Trump’s more radical plans for the economy. He had also made it clear that his priority was to become Fed chair once Jay Powell stepped down in May 2026.

Lutnick’s camp was also in favour of Warsh, according to people briefed about the matter. One option floated was for Warsh to stay in the role until the Fed chair opened up, they added. But that plan appeared too convoluted, opening the way for Bessent to boomerang back into the pole position.

His bid was boosted by the support of powerful people in Maga circles, especially Steve Bannon, Trump’s former political strategist, and Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, cementing his stature as a consensus candidate.

Accolades rolled in, including from Larry Kudlow, Trump’s former National Economic Council director, who told the FT that Bessent was “absolutely first rate” and an “excellent choice”. But others lamented the decision.

An influential investor said that Rowan would have been a better choice. “Marc manages nearly a trillion dollars, he’s the smartest guy on Wall Street and populists fear smart people,” said the investor. “Bessent is likely to follow Trump’s lead.”

Still, as Trump hoped, there was a sense of relief among many Wall Street investors, some of whom took to Musk’s social media site X to show their support.

“Scott will be instrumental in unleashing the animal spirits of Trump’s economic plan while also being vigilant against the enemies of our great country,” investor Kyle Bass wrote.