Meet the top 4 candidates Trump is considering for Secretary of the Treasury

President-elect Donald Trump has not yet announced his pick for Treasury Secretary.

Two weeks after securing his return to the White House, president-elect Donald Trump has swiftly been forming his Cabinet for 2025.

Trump already announced six of the people he wants to lead the 15 executive departments, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for the Department of Health and Human Services and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for the State Department.

He appears to be taking a slower pace as he chooses his nominated successor to Janet Yellen, the current Secretary of the Treasury.

The new Treasury Secretary will likely have two immediate tasks: Helping the US avoid default when the national debt ceiling expires in January 2025 and extending the 2017 Trump tax cut, which is worth trillions and is mostly set to expire next year.

The president-elect was initially said to be considering just two candidates, but The Wall Street Journal and New York Times reported that he’s been having second thoughts and expanded the list to four prospects.

With Trump seemingly still unsure over his choice, it’s also possible that another candidate may emerge.

Here are the top picks Trump is reportedly now considering for Secretary of the Treasury. A press contact for Trump’s transition team did not respond to a request for comment from B-17.

Kevin Warsh

Kevin Warsh, center, is rising as one of the candidates for Trump’s Treasury Secretary.

Warsh, 54, is a former Morgan Stanley banker and one of the newer contenders.

He was an economic advisor to President George W. Bush from 2002 to 2006 and a governor of the Federal Reserve Board from 2006 to 2011. During the latter period, Warsh was a central figure in shaping the nation’s response to the 2007-2008 financial crisis, working to rescue major ailing banks.

More recently, he’s been working on Trump’s transition team, helping with economic policy and personnel, according to The Journal.

Warsh appears to have been in the president-elect’s good graces for several years. Axios reported that Trump praised Warsh as a “really handsome guy” when the two met in 2017 at the White House.

Trump had been floating Warsh that year as a frontrunner for Fed chair. He eventually picked Jerome Powell for the role.

Warsh is often seen as a financial hawk, saying in October that he believed the Fed “doesn’t seem to have a serious theory of inflation” and writing in July that it moved too slowly to curb surging prices.

In his July commentary, he blamed inflation on “irresponsible government spending and excessive money printing.” Warsh has also been critical of America’s burgeoning debt.

Marc Rowan

Marc Rowan isn’t said to be actively lobbying for Treasury Secretary, but his aides have reportedly been in touch with the Trump administration.

Rowan, 62, is a billionaire investor who leads Apollo Global Management, which he cofounded in the 1990s. It now has nearly $700 billion in assets under management. Apollo recently announced that it plans to double its assets under management to $1.5 trillion by 2029.

The Journal and the Times reported that Rowan, like Warsh, is one of Trump’s new candidates.

The Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that while the billionaire’s aides are in touch with Trump, Rowan isn’t actively trying to secure the Treasury Secretary role and hasn’t spoken to Trump personally about such a position.

But the Times also wrote that Trump has been telling his staff that he’s impressed with Rowan, who Bloomberg estimates to be worth $10.9 billion.

Rowan has said that US economic concerns must be fixed by what he called “wholesale change,” which he said Trump and his new administration would bring.

That’s broadly in line with how Trump has framed his Cabinet picks, as key movers who will upset the status quo and push fresh reform.

Rowan has kept a relatively low profile on his views about government policy, though he recently voiced concerns that the Fed could overstimulate the economy with interest rate cuts.

Howard Lutnick

Howard Lutnick spoke for Trump at Madison Square Garden and praised a time when the US was reliant on tariffs instead of income tax. 

Lutnick, 63, is the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a Wall Street financial services firm.

Lutnick has been serving as Trump’s transition cochair with Linda McMahon, of WWE royalty. He’s been a friend of the president-elect for decades, repeatedly holding fundraisers for Trump.

In August, Lutnick hosted an event at his home in the Hamptons that raised $15 million for the Trump-Vance campaign.

Lutnick has aligned himself closely with Trump’s rhetoric. In late October, he expressed a vision for the US economy, describing America in the year 1900 to a crowd at Madison Square Garden, saying it was a time when the “economy was rocking.”

“We had no income tax, and all we had was tariffs,” he said to a cheering stadium.

Lutnick has also said that under Trump, corporate taxes would be raised for US giants like Apple and Tesla. He said that Elon Musk, a Trump ally, welcomed such a move if it applied to all big players. Musk has endorsed Lutnick for Treasury Secretary.

Lutnick is also known for steering Cantor Fitzgerald after the 9/11 attack, which killed 658 of its 960 employees at the World Trade Center.

Scott Bessent

Scott Bessent is the founder of macro investment firm Key Square Capital Management. 

Bessent, 62, was one of the original frontrunners for Trump’s Treasury Secretary.

His involvement emerged early last week when Reuters reported that the founder of macro investment firm Key Square Capital Management had been meeting with Trump at the Mar-a-Lago resort.

Bessent worked for the liberal philanthropist George Soros from 1991 to 2015, making a name for himself by betting big against the British pound, which collapsed in 1992, and then against the Japanese yen as it weakened in 2013.

He left Soros’ firm in 2015 to start Key Square, and The Journal reported that he hasn’t spoken to the billionaire in years.

Bessent has been vocal in his support for Trump, telling Breitbart in August that Vice President Kamala Harris would have crashed the economy if she was president.

He wrote an opinion column just after the election, praising Trump for a stock market rally after his win and knocking 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists for predicting that the president-elect’s agenda would be “counterproductive.”

The investor laid out his ideas for the economy in his written piece, calling for the Trump administration to reduce government borrowing and to reform President Joe Biden’s policies for investment in a “quixotic energy transition.”

Like Lutnick, he’s advocated for an economy that’s more reliant on tariffs and weaned off income tax, saying the move would restore America’s position on the world stage and help curb China’s growth.

However, The Journal reported that some conservatives in Trump’s circle were concerned about Bessent’s past experience working for Soros, who has attracted the ire of the MAGA base for his support of left-leaning causes.