Scott Kenneth Homer Bessent (/ˈbɛsənt/ BESS-ənt; born August 21, 1962) is an American investor and hedge fund manager who has served since 2025 as the 79th United States secretary of the treasury.

[1] He was a partner at Soros Fund Management and the founder of Key Square Group, a global macro investment firm.

[8][16][17][18][19] In 1992, Bessent was a leading member of the team whose bet on the Black Wednesday collapse of the British pound garnered over $1 billion for the firm.

[15][16] Bessent founded Key Square Group in 2015 with Michael Germino, who had been the global head of capital markets at SFM.

[26][27] Key Square's main fund returns increased by 13% in 2016 but declined or broke even every year from 2017 to 2021 before making major gains in 2021, 2022 and 2023.

[37] On November 22, 2024, President-elect Trump announced his intention to nominate Bessent to serve as the United States secretary of the treasury in his second administration.

During the hearing, he defended plans to impose tariffs, supported tax cut extensions, and called for tougher economic policies on China and Russia.

[47] On February 1, 2025, Bessent was concurrently named the Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, replacing Rohit Chopra, who was fired the same day.

[13][54] He is a trustee of Classical American Homes Preservation Trust (renamed the Richard Hampton Jenrette Foundation),[55] and a former board member of the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina.

[13][52] Bessent opened two foundations in 2022, and created the McLeod Rehabilitation Center at the Shriners Hospital for Children in Greenville, South Carolina.

[59] In a 2022 article commemorating former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Bessent wrote: "President Trump's most enduring achievement may have been to wake the United States and the world to the growing dangers of an ever-more-antagonistic China.

In response, Abe's greatest foreign policy achievement was taking this awakening and developing a multilateral solution for containment.

[61] In a November 2024 Fox News op-ed, he wrote that the "U.S. opened its markets to the world, but China's resulting economic growth has only cemented the hold of a despotic regime" and argued tariffs "are a means to finally stand up for Americans".

[62] Bessent argued that Trump's pledges to impose blanket 20% tariffs on all imports "were maximalist positions that would probably be watered down in talks with trading partners".

It would be a serious error for the Trump administration to interfere with the Fed’s independence, as Mr. Bessent has suggested.Bessent resides in Charleston, South Carolina,[67] and belongs to the Huguenot Church,[68] which his ancestors helped build in 1680.

[74] Bessent's net worth was valued at least at $521 million, according to his December 28, 2024, financial assets disclosure by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.