Copyright Los Angeles Times
Only compared with the likes of Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Pam Bondi, Russell Vought, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Kristi Noem and others in President Trump’s Cabinet of incompetents, radicals and flatterers would Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent be the welcome “normie.” That’s how Bessent, a pragmatic, seemingly mild-mannered and once-bipartisan hedge fund executive, was greeted from Wall Street to Main Street upon Trump’s nomination of him after the election nearly a year ago. “‘Huge relief.’ CEOs exhale after Trump taps Scott Bessent to lead Treasury” was the CNN headline. Bessent had won Trump’s favor over, among others, the brash and Trump-toadying Howard Lutnick, who had to settle for Commerce secretary. Elon Musk, soon to be Trump’s short-lived co-president, called Bessent a “business-as-usual choice.” It wasn’t a compliment — Musk favored Lutnick, a fellow “move fast and break things” type. Only by Trump standards — an oxymoron, to be sure — has Bessent turned out to be normal. Which only proves that the Trump 2.0 Cabinet has no place for actual normies. To survive means to be servile. And Bessent, who’s accompanied Trump at his Asia stops this week, is doing both. Business folks and other traditional Republicans hoped that Bessent would help deliver the Trump promises they coveted: big tax cuts and an end to those pesky regulations enacted after the 2008 financial crash. On those, he has helped deliver. But Trump’s business backers also hoped that Bessent would keep a lid on other defining Trump vows that they dreaded: across-the-board tariffs, threats to the Federal Reserve’s independence and mass deportations of immigrants, a.k.a. businesses’ employees. On those policies, Bessent has bent to Trump. The Treasury secretary failed to block Trump’s “Liberation Day” global tariffs that upended the stock and bond markets in April. He has been a moderating influence behind the scenes and is as responsible as anyone, for better and worse, for Trump’s on-and-off execution of punitive tariffs against U.S. trading partners. Same for Bessent’s impact on Trump’s attempted takeover of the Fed: moderation at the margins. At least Fed Chair Jerome Powell still holds his job. As for the cruel deportations, Bessent has had no discernible influence. Extraordinarily, Bessent has managed to bend Trump his way in plain violation of Trump’s signature “America First” doctrine, and despite real pain to Trump’s loyal supporters in rural America. He is the architect of a $20-billion U.S. bailout to Argentina that he and Trump announced Sept. 24, and is seeking $20 billion more in private-sector loans to that country, a perennial on the globe’s economic sick list with a history of defaults. This is not normal. Yes, Trump really likes Argentina’s President Javier Milei, not least because the mop-headed Milei really likes Trump and models his right-wing policies and performative politics after the norms-busting U.S. president. And vice versa: “El Loco” bequeathed his government-slashing chainsaw to Musk at a conservative conference in February, when Musk’s DOGE assault on federal agencies was at its peak. Still, for Trump to transgress his America First movement by agreeing to bail out a foreign country, a minor ally at that, is especially remarkable considering that Trump’s base has its roots in the tea-party movement of two decades ago — a movement that sprang from outrage at the Bush-Obama bailouts of American banks and businesses. The fallout from the south-of-the-border bailout has only made the whole episode more, well, abnormal. No sooner had Bessent and Trump unveiled the Argentine gambit than Argentina arranged deals with China for massive soybean sales that would have gone to U.S. producers, but for China’s retaliation for Trump tariffs. And then Trump, in a weak bid to bring down rising beef prices in this country — as he’d promised for prices across the board in his reelection campaign — approved imports of beef from … Argentina. “It’s really just a kick in the nuts,” a Kansas cattleman and Trump supporter colorfully told the New York Times. “Come on, President Trump, this is ‘America First’ policy? No.” A cattle company in Wyoming called Trump’s move “an absolute betrayal,” and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Assn. complained that Trump “undercuts the future of family farmers and ranchers.” Trump’s utterly condescending social media reply last week about the cattle ranchers suggested he’s unbowed about the Bessent bailout and its fallout. “If it weren’t for me,” he said of the ranchers, “they would be doing just as they’ve done for the past 20 years — Terrible!” He called on them “to get their prices down.” Soybean farmers are no happier. Even before the Argentina-China deal, they and other U.S. producers had suffered lost sales and higher import prices from Trump tariffs and trading partners’ retaliation. Farm country is little assuaged by Trump’s talk of a bailout for them, as they got in his first term. According to a corn and soybean farmer quoted in the New York Times piece, “We would much rather farm with no federal assistance whatsoever.” Bessent’s attempted commiseration on Sunday was laughable. “I’m actually a soybean farmer,” he told host Martha Raddatz on ABC News’ “This Week.” “I have felt this pain, too.” Bessent, who owns and rents out farmland in North Dakota, suggested that farmers would be pleased by an imminent deal between the U.S. and China that Bessent negotiated in advance of Trump’s meeting in South Korea with China’s Xi Jinping. (Farmers are still waiting for China to make the purchases it agreed to in a first-term deal with Trump.) Oh, one more thing about the Bessent bailout: As journalist Judd Legum recently reported in his newsletter Popular Information, the lifeline to Argentina also helped a Bessent friend, hedge-fund billionaire Rob Citrone, who stood to lose big if the country continued its downward spiral. And that’s the kind of aggrandizing deal that indeed makes Bessent a “normie” — by Trump World standards.
