Trump fills his cabinet with more appointments, Treasury to Bessent

US President-elect Donald Trump nominated the investor Scott Bessent to be the new treasury secretary, a Trump post on his social media platform Truth Social on Friday reported.

Bessent, 62, is the founder of the hedge fund Key Square Group. He was previously the chief investment officer of George Soros’ Soros Fund Management and is regarded as an expert in global macro investments.

Some Republican hardliners, as well as Trump supporter tech billionaire Elon Musk, viewed this as a disadvantage. Parts of the American right demonize the liberal Soros as a financier of the Democrats.

Trump said Bessent is to address, among other things, the imbalances in foreign trade and focus on economic growth. Trump also wants him to curb the growth of the US national debt, which ballooned under Trump’s first presidency as he pushed through massive tax cuts for wealthy Americans.

The next US treasury secretary will have to find a way to implement Trump’s campaign promises, such as tax cuts and new import tariffs.

Trump’s tariff plan has been massively criticized by both liberal and conservative economists who say it would lead to higher prices for US consumers and strain the government’s budget. Bessent has defended the proposals in recent months.

The role also carries global financial market responsibility, particularly as the United States has the largest government bond market.

Howard Lutnick, a confidant of Trump, had also vied for the treasury secretary position and was supported by tech billionaire Elon Musk, among others. However, Trump ultimately nominated Lutnick for the commerce secretary position.

In other nominations, Trump plans to appoint Russel Vought, an author of the arch-conservative Project 2025, to lead the Office of Management and Budget. Vought focused the document on ideas for presidential decrees that could, among other things, limit the independence of certain agencies.

On Friday evening, Trump also named former congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer as his labour secretary. With this appointment of a moderate Republican, Trump aims to build a bridge to the unions. According to the website “Politico,” the large Teamsters union backed Chavez-DeRemer, who is from Oregon.

Scott Turner, a former National Football League player who already had a role in the first Trump administration, is to take responsibility for Housing and Urban Development in the new cabinet. Trump nominated physician and former congressman Dave Weldon to head the US public health authority, the Centers for Disease Control or CDC.

The Food and Drug Administration or FDA is to be led by Martin Makary, a surgeon at Johns Hopkins University who became noted during the COVID-19 pandemic as a critic of the health authorities. Several of the new candidates have been frequent guests on Fox News programmes in recent years.

Controversy around his earlier appointments continues as there was a new information about Tulsi Gabbard, whom Trump wants to appoint as intelligence coordinator. CNN reported that she had briefly appeared on a US aviation security watchlist. Gabbard has been criticized for spreading Russian propaganda arguments and for meeting with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in 2017. According to experts, the watchlist includes individuals whose travel behaviour raises concerns. It remained unclear why Gabbard ended up on the list.

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