Trump’s Treasury Search Gains Steam With Fresh Meetings
(Bloomberg) -- President-elect Donald Trump’s dramatic search for a Treasury secretary continues as he’s scheduled to hold interviews Wednesday with former Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh and Apollo Global Management Inc.’s Marc Rowan, according to people familiar with the matter.
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US Senator Bill Hagerty, a Tennessee Republican and also a potential contender for a cabinet-level position, spent much of Tuesday with Trump, flying aboard the president-elect’s plane to a SpaceX rocket launch in Texas.
A representative for Rowan declined to comment. Warsh did not respond to a request for comment sent to him through a representative. A request for comment to Hagerty’s office wasn’t immediately returned.
The conversations with the candidates, which come after days of deliberations and public posturing for the Treasury job, have the potential to break the logjam over whom to nominate to the country’s most powerful economic policy post, essentially the US’s chief financial officer.
Key Square Group LP founder Scott Bessent is also a contender for the post. The Trump transition team did not respond to a request to comment on the status of the search.
In an otherwise lightning quick build-out of a cabinet, the last week of Trump’s evolving administration was marked by surprising — and sometimes controversial picks — including Matt Gaetz for Attorney General and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead Health and Human Services.
But much of the public feuding over trying to win Trump’s favor has been between allies of Howard Lutnick, who co-helmed his transition team, and Bessent.
On Tuesday, Trump put a stop to the jockeying, announcing Lutnick as his pick for Commerce secretary and adding that the Cantor Fitzgerald LP CEO will have an expanded purview over trade and tariff policies. The move — which gives Lutnick a larger policy portfolio than is typical for a Commerce chief — may also have been the strongest sign yet that the president-elect is close to landing on a Treasury secretary.
Rowan and Warsh were both added to the list of contenders in recent days as Trump grew frustrated at infighting over the post.
The Treasury pick is expected to be the first of several economic positions announced, including key White House posts: the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers and the directors of the National Economic Council and the Domestic Policy Council.
The next Treasury secretary, and other key economic nominees, will be immediately pulled into policy priorities — including renewing Trump’s first-term tax cuts — in the incoming administration, former World Bank Group president David Malpass said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Surveillance Wednesday.
“As you look to 2025, there is a perfect storm coming together,” he said. “You have to get the tax bill done and get a budget out fast. You have the debt limit coming at you, and that’s a difficult one because you have to get your party to vote for increase in the national debt.”
--With assistance from Katherine Burton, Laura Benitez, Maria Clara Cobo, Lisa Abramowicz, Jonathan Ferro and Meghashyam Mali.
(Adds David Malpass comments in final two paragraphs.)
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