Scott Bessent and the US President

Monday 26 January 2026

Scott Bessent represents a markedly different category of Trump-aligned figure from the rhetorical outsiders who clustered around the former President during his first term. A seasoned hedge fund manager and macroeconomic strategist, Bessent was nominated as US Treasury Secretary by President Trump and confirmed by the US Senate in a bipartisan vote on 27 January 2025. Bessent’s relationship with Donald Trump has been grounded not in performative loyalty or media activism, but in perceived technical competence and ideological alignment on questions of economic power, fiscal sovereignty and the international role of the United States. His influence, while indirect for much of the Trump era, has increasingly been understood as relevant to the intersection between economic policy and foreign affairs.

Bessent made his reputation in global finance long before entering Trump’s political orbit. Having worked for George Soros and later founding his own investment firm, he developed a profile as a sophisticated interpreter of currency markets, sovereign debt and geopolitical risk. This background mattered. Trump’s approach to governance, particularly in the realm of foreign policy, consistently treated economic instruments not as subordinate tools but as primary levers of power. Trade policy, sanctions, tariffs and currency dominance were all elevated to the level of strategic weapons. It is within this framework that Bessent’s thinking found resonance.

Unlike traditional Treasury or State Department figures, Bessent has tended to frame foreign policy outcomes through the lens of incentives, balance sheets and market psychology. In public commentary he has emphasised the importance of preserving the centrality of the US dollar, warning that overuse of financial sanctions could accelerate de-dollarisation and thereby weaken American leverage in the long term. This argument aligned closely with Trump’s instinctive suspicion of multilateralism and his preference for bilateral pressure backed by economic threat rather than institutional consensus.

Bessent’s relationship with Trump was therefore less about personal intimacy than about intellectual utility. Trump has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to listen to advisers who can translate complex issues into clear, transactional choices. Bessent’s analyses, focused on costs, returns and leverage, fit this pattern. While he did not play a central role in the formal foreign policy apparatus during Trump’s first term, his ideas circulated within conservative policy and financial circles that increasingly overlapped with Trump’s advisory environment.

This overlap became more visible as Trump positioned himself for a potential return to office. Bessent emerged as a credible candidate for senior economic office, not least because he combined Wall Street credibility with a sceptical view of global economic governance that resonated with Trump’s base. In this sense, Bessent represented a bridge between elite financial expertise and populist economic nationalism, a combination that Trump has often sought but rarely sustained.

Ukraine provides a particularly revealing case study of Bessent’s worldview and its potential foreign policy implications. In commentary on the war, Bessent has tended to frame US support for Ukraine not primarily in moral or ideological terms, but as a question of sustainability, burden-sharing and strategic return. He has questioned the open-ended nature of American financial commitments, arguing that prolonged conflict risks fiscal fatigue and unintended consequences for global markets. Such remarks echo a broader Trump-aligned critique that assistance to Ukraine, while not illegitimate, should be more tightly conditioned and more visibly aligned with US economic interests.

Importantly, Bessent’s position does not map neatly onto isolationism. Rather it reflects a form of economically driven realism. From this perspective, Ukraine is significant not only as a battlefield, but as a variable within a wider contest involving sanctions regimes, energy markets and the credibility of Western financial power. Bessent has suggested that poorly calibrated sanctions could damage allies as much as adversaries, and that the long-term objective should be strategic leverage rather than symbolic punishment. This approach dovetails with Trump’s own scepticism towards sanctions that lack clear exit strategies.

Within a future Trump administration, Bessent’s influence on foreign policy would likely be exercised indirectly, through economic decision-making rather than diplomatic initiative. Treasury policy, under such a model, would become a central arena of geopolitical strategy. Choices about debt issuance, sanctions enforcement, energy pricing and financial regulation would be treated as instruments shaping international behaviour. Ukraine, in this context, would be viewed through the prism of cost-benefit analysis rather than alliance obligation alone.

Critics argue that this framework risks undervaluing the political and moral dimensions of foreign policy, particularly in conflicts involving aggression and territorial violation. Supporters counter that moral clarity without economic realism can lead to strategic overreach. Bessent’s relationship with Trump thus highlights a deeper tension within contemporary American statecraft: whether economic rationality should discipline foreign policy ambition, or whether it should serve it.

Ultimately, Scott Bessent should be understood not as a foreign policy actor in the traditional sense, but as a potential architect of the economic logic underpinning Trump-era diplomacy. His relationship with Trump reflects the former President’s enduring belief that global politics is, at its core, a negotiation over resources, leverage and advantage. In that worldview Ukraine is not marginal, but neither is she sacrosanct. She is one element within a broader strategic ledger, to be supported, constrained or leveraged according to calculations that prioritise American economic power above all else.

Comparison with Biden-era Treasury and foreign economic policy

The contrast between Bessent’s approach and that of the Biden administration is instructive. Under President Joe Biden, economic policy has been more explicitly integrated into a values-based conception of foreign policy. The Treasury Department, led by Janet Yellen, has treated sanctions not merely as instruments of leverage but as expressions of collective moral judgement, coordinated closely with allies and embedded within broader diplomatic strategies.

In the context of Ukraine, this has meant an emphasis on unity, endurance and signalling. Financial assistance and sanctions have been justified as necessary to uphold international norms, even at significant economic cost. Bessent’s critique of this approach is not that it is wrong in principle, but that it risks diminishing returns. From his perspective, sanctions that become permanent fixtures lose their coercive power, while large-scale fiscal commitments without defined endpoints erode domestic political support.

Where Biden-era policy has sought to institutionalise economic pressure through multilateral frameworks, Bessent’s thinking points towards flexibility and reversibility. He has argued, implicitly if not always explicitly, that economic tools should be deployed with the same attention to exit strategies as military interventions. This divergence reflects a broader philosophical split: between an administration that views economic statecraft as a means of reinforcing alliances and norms, and a Trump-aligned outlook that treats it as a bargaining mechanism to be adjusted as circumstances change.

Bessent and the longer tradition of American economic statecraft

Placed in historical perspective, Bessent’s views are neither novel nor aberrant. They draw upon a long tradition in American foreign policy that prioritises economic power as the foundation of global influence. From the Marshall Plan to Cold War export controls, and from the Nixon shock to post-2008 quantitative easing, US policymakers have repeatedly used financial instruments to shape international outcomes.

What distinguishes the Trump-Bessent synthesis is its scepticism towards permanence. Earlier eras sought to build durable economic architectures, whether Bretton Woods or the post-war trading system. Bessent’s emphasis, by contrast, is on optionality and leverage in a fragmented world. In a global economy characterised by competing blocs and contested currencies, he appears less interested in maintaining universal systems than in preserving American freedom of manoeuvre within them.

Ukraine again serves as a revealing lens. In classical Cold War terms, she might have been framed as a frontline state deserving open-ended support. In Bessent’s calculus, she is a strategically important but economically costly commitment, one that must be continuously justified in relation to broader US financial interests. This does not imply indifference, but it does suggest conditionality.

Seen this way, Scott Bessent’s relationship with Donald Trump is best understood as part of a broader reorientation of American power thinking. It reflects a shift away from institutionalised economic leadership towards transactional economic leverage, and from moralised foreign policy towards fiscally disciplined realism. Whether this approach enhances or undermines American influence remains contested. What is clear, however, is that figures such as Bessent illuminate how deeply questions of markets, money and state power are now intertwined with the future of US foreign policy, including its stance towards Ukraine.