Elon Musk wants Trump to disrupt Wall Street with his Treasury pick
CNN
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As Donald Trump privately considers his team to lead America's economy during his term, Elon Musk has put his thumb on the scale, urging followers on X to help make a public push for a candidate who won't be "business as usual" on Wall Street.
Musk, a Trump ally who has gained significant influence in the formation of Trump's incoming administration, posted on X Saturday that he wants Howard Lutnick, a staunch Trump supporter who runs investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, to serve as the next Treasury secretary.
Scott Bessent, the founder of capital management firm Key Square, has been widely viewed as the frontrunner for the job.
"My view fwiw is that Bessent is a business-as-usual choice, whereas @howardlutnick will actually enact change," Musk posted Saturday. "Business-as-usual is driving America bankrupt, so we need change one way or another."
Musk urged his followers to "weigh in on this for @realDonaldTrump to consider feedback."
Both Bessent and Lutnick are respected on Wall Street and have publicly supported Trump and his economic policies, including massive and unprecedented tariffs that remain largely unpopular among mainstream economists. Both also have embraced cryptocurrencies, which Trump has backed in recent months despite initial skepticism.
But Lutnick, a leader of Trump's transition team, demonstrates a personality that is somewhat more forceful and boasting than Bessent, whose demeanor is perhaps more typical of a Treasury secretary, a position that often plays a calming role for Wall Street during times of economic or market turmoil.
For example, Bessent wrote an op-ed on Fox News on Friday in support of Trump's policy, saying, "Tariffs are a means to finally stand up for Americans." Lutnick, by contrast, spoke at Trump's controversial pre-election Madison Square Garden rally, exclaiming: "When was America great? … 125 years ago. We had no income tax, and all we had was tariffs."
That's why some Wall Street titans are trying to push for Bessent. Kyle Bass, a billionaire hedge fund investor at Hayman Capital Management, said Lutnick doesn't have the composition to lead the Treasury.
"Scott Bessent is eminently more qualified than Howard Lutnick to run the U.S. Treasury," Bass posted on X Wednesday. "Scott understands markets, economics, people, and geopolitics better than anyone I've ever interacted with. Markets have already anticipated a Bessent choice. Lutnick is not Trump's answer."
Agreeing with Bass, Third Point's Dan Loeb posted: "Right now the only thing that matters is the President's choice for this important position," noting the Treasury secretary will help determine how much America's economy grows by giving investors confidence about inflation and markets.
But style aside, market analysts say Trump has made clear his intention to impose widespread tariffs, and the person occupying the Treasury secretary office probably won't make much of a difference other than, perhaps, the speed at which they get enacted.
"The fact is that if Trump wants tariffs, he's going to get tariffs regardless of who's in charge at Treasury or USTR or anywhere else," said Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics and trade at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute. "There's plenty of levers he can use, and I wouldn't really expect a huge difference there."
If Trump's plans to impose across-the-board tariffs, deport millions of undocumented workers and potentially influence the Federal Reserve get put in place, the next Treasury secretary may need to contend with another inflation crisis. Those policies would weaken growth, boost inflation and lower employment, according to a recent working paper released by the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Inflation would climb to at least 6% by 2026, and by 2028, consumer prices would be 20% higher, the researchers found.
Both Lutnick and Bessent have been skeptical of mainstream economists' predictions that Trump's policies would be inflationary.
Trump's decision-making process
Treasury secretary contenders have spent the past week in behind-the-scenes maneuvering to secure the marquee economic role.
Late last week, Trump had reached a near-final decision to hand the role to Bessent, a relatively recent MAGA convert, a decision some officials involved in the transition began to message to outside allies. At that point, Lutnick waged an aggressive, eleventh-hour campaign to position himself for the job. Four people familiar with the dynamic tell CNN that Lutnick sought to convince Trump that only he would be in full support of the steep tariffs Trump had pledged, and which Lutnick had been promoting in cable television appearances.
As the competition intensified, with Bessent described as taking a more back-seat approach to Lutnick's semi-public campaign, frustration grew palpable among Trump and his team.
"He's following the Cheney model," one person said of Lutnick, not favorably, referring to Dick Cheney's job heading up George W. Bush's vice-presidential selection committee before landing the job himself.
Trump even mused that he ought to rule out both of them and pick a neutral party: Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty had interviewed the prior weekend for a variety of administration jobs, and Larry Kudlow, a Trump loyalist, would be seen as a market- and tax-friendly pick.
But Kudlow, 77, informed the Trump team that he will not be returning to government, in part to preserve his health, according to sources familiar with the conversations. In June 2018, while serving as Trump's director of the National Economic Council, Kudlow suffered a mild heart attack and was hospitalized. In addition to a leadership role at the America First Policy Institute, an outside group that has helped develop Trump's agenda, he currently hosts a show on Fox Business where members of Trump's orbit often appear to promote it.
A full week after appearing to decide on nominating Bessent, Trump interviewed him again at Mar-a-Lago.
What the Treasury secretary does
Regardless of party affiliation, Treasury secretaries historically have espoused policies that strengthen the US dollar, promote economic growth, signal stability to the stock and bond markets, and seek to maintain stability of the tax base, revenue from which flows into Treasury's coffers to fund the operations of the federal government.
A key Cabinet player, the Treasury secretary advises the president on economic and fiscal matters, including spending and taxes.
The role will be especially important in the coming Trump administration considering the president-elect's campaign promises to impose an across-the-board tariff of either 10% or 20% on every import coming into the United States, as well as a tariff upward of 60% on all Chinese imports.
Also, the incoming secretary will quickly have to deal with making sure the nation doesn't default on its obligations once the debt ceiling returns in early January, unless Congress addresses the cap before that. Plus, the secretary will work with Trump and congressional Republicans to extend the more than $4 trillion in Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provisions that expire at the end of 2025.
And all that's in addition to the secretary's regular duties overseeing the Treasury Department, which pays trillions of dollars in bills, collects taxes, sells US debt securities to investors and serves as a regulator of the banking and finance industries. The secretary also serves as the nation's finance minister on the global stage.
During his first term, Trump chose Steven Mnuchin, a financier and Hollywood producer who stayed in the administration all four years. Mnuchin, who had no government experience before taking the Treasury post, had also served as finance chairman of Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. He worked on and helped implement the 2017 tax cuts law and some of the key pandemic relief measures, including the stimulus checks that were distributed to millions of Americans, among other initiatives.
CNN's Kevin Liptak and Matt Egan contributed to this report
