Scott Bessent: The man who saved the economy

Telegraph

10-04-2025

At 1.18pm on Wednesday, Donald Trump resuscitated the global economy with a 161 word Truth Social post reversing his controversial tariff policy.
Mr Trump insisted the reason behind his abrupt u-turn was because people had become 'yippy' and 'afraid'. However it is thought that Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, ultimately convinced the US president to change course.
For days the Republican leader had aggressively doubled down on his sweeping 'reciprocal' tariffs - ignoring pleas from billionaire donors, world leaders and CEOs to relent.
But a week after he paraded his colour-coded chart in the White House rose garden on 'Liberation Day', the US president backed down, announcing a 90-day pause for everyone but China.
The u-turn was so abrupt it caught most of his cabinet members off guard.
Mr Bessent, Mr Trump and Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, were holed up in the Oval Office from around midday on Wednesday, crafting a short statement that would send stocks soaring after the most volatile period since the pandemic.
'We wrote it from our hearts, right?' Mr Trump later said about the Truth Social post. 'It was written as something that I think was very positive for the world and for us, and we don't want to hurt countries that don't need to be hurt, and they all want to negotiate.'
But how did Mr Bessent manage to win over the president as he ignored pleas from his 'first buddy' Elon Musk and other key allies to reverse the tariffs choking the economy?
Mr Bessent's mettle was put to the test decades ago: he was one of George Soros' right-hand men when the billionaire bet against the pound on Black Wednesday.
Then in his early thirties, Mr Bessent was part of one of the most famous trades in history, helping net the Soros Fund some $1.5 billion in the space of a month.
Despite his association with the liberal billionaire, who is reviled by the Right, Mr Trump respects his former economic adviser, once describing him as a 'nice-looking guy and one of the most brilliant men on Wall Street'.
So when Mr Bessent called for a private meeting with Mr Trump on Sunday, after a bruising few days in the stock market following the president's tariff announcement, he hoped the Republican leader would be prepared to listen.
The treasury secretary downplayed fears of a recession publicly, before flying back with Mr Trump to Washington from Palm Beach on Air Force One.
As the pair flew back north, Mr Bessent advised Mr Trump to focus on negotiating with other countries while heaping praise on his negotiating abilities, sources told the New York Times.
He also said Mr Trump needed to clarify his endgame, something which Mr Trump pushed back on, saying the pain was 'short term', the paper reported.
Appearing to digest some of Mr Bessent's advice, Mr Trump told reporters 'virtually every country wants to negotiate'.
. @POTUS: "I will say this, virtually every country wants to negotiate. If I didn't do what I did over the last couple of weeks, you wouldn't have anybody who wants to negotiate... Now, they're offering things to us that we would've never even thought of asking them for..." pic.twitter.com/T39Tdk5DCN
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 7, 2025
As Mr Trump showed no sign of letting up, Republican Senators, including Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz, appeared on Fox News and said they hoped Mr Trump would begin negotiating with other countries to make deals.
'I'll leave it up to you what's enough, what's not enough,' Mr Graham said he told Mr Trump on Tuesday night, 'but I think you can see people are looking for some points on the board.'
For several days after Mr Trump sent the economy into a downturn, the president claimed he did not care if the stock market fell, as trillions of dollars were wiped from the market in days.
By Wednesday morning the depths of the economic crisis became clear as US government bond yields, which form the backbone of the global financial system, surged.
That morning Mr Trump spoke with the Karin Keller-Sutter, the Swiss president, whose country has been given 31 per cent tariffs.
Ms Keller-Sutter urged Mr Trump to backtrack on the punitive policy, according to The New York Times.
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, told Fox News that morning that the 'likely outcome' was a recession.
"Do you personally expect a recession?"
"I think probably. That's a likely outcome."
This is the comment from this morning where Jamie Dimon saved the entire global economy from catastrophe.
pic.twitter.com/qbjxsTBdu5
— Spencer Hakimian (@SpencerHakimian) April 10, 2025
At 9.30am on Wednesday Mr Trump had urged everyone to 'Be cool!'
'Everything is going to work out well. The USA will be bigger and better than ever before!', he wrote on Truth Social.
Four minutes later, in comments which have sparked some concerns over insider trading, Mr Trump wrote: 'This is a great time to buy!!! DJT'.
Hours later Mr Bessent and Mr Lutnick banded together and met with the president, insisting their phones had been flooded with calls from countries wanting to negotiate - the tariffs had worked but they now needed time to thrash out deals.
The pair pointed out that China's retaliatory tariff hike on US imports gave Mr Trump wiggle room to isolate Beijing while pausing the penalties on other countries, an administration official told Axios.
Mr Bessent appeared to have triumphed over senior trade adviser Peter Navarro, who had been pushing for aggressive tariffs and had a public spat with Mr Musk, in winning Mr Trump's ear.
By midday, Mr Bessent and Mr Lutnick were in the Oval Office helping Mr Trump word his stunning reversal, which was described by the latter as 'one of the most extraordinary Truth posts of his presidency'.
'Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the world's markets, I am hereby raising the tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125 per cent, effective immediately', Mr Trump wrote.
He added: 'Conversely, and based on the fact that more than 75 Countries have called representatives of the United States... and that these Countries have not, at my strong suggestion, retaliated in any way, shape, or form against the United States, I have authorised a 90 day pause, and a substantially lowered reciprocal tariff during this period, of 10 per cent, also effective immediately.'
The markets immediately surged, with the benchmark S&P 500 closing 9.5 pc higher. Bond yields came down from earlier highs and the dollar rebounded against safe-haven currencies.
'This was driven by the president's strategy. He and I had a long talk on Sunday, and this was his strategy all along,' Mr Bessent said on Wednesday as he tried to make the sudden gear change appear part of a master-plan.
But Mr Trump appeared to contradict this by telling reporters he initiated the pause because: 'I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippy'.
'I saw last night that people were getting a little queasy,' Mr Trump said. 'The bond market right now is beautiful.'
'I guess they say it was the biggest day in financial history,' Mr Trump said, less than 90 minutes after his Truth Social post.
The final decision, he said, 'probably came together early this morning, fairly early this morning. Just wrote it up. We didn't have the use of, we didn't have access to lawyers,' he told reporters in the Oval Office. 'We wrote it up from our hearts.'
'But this was something certainly we've been talking about for a period of time, and we decided to pull the trigger, and we did it today, and we're happy about it,' he added.
Now poised to negotiate with trading partners in a 'bespoke', country-by-country strategy, Mr Bessent carries the weight of the global economy on his shoulders.