WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump’s decision on a treasury secretary is about far more than whose name will be printed on America’s money.
The choice of how to fill his highest-profile outstanding Cabinet selection will be the clearest indication yet of how he intends to wield import tariffs in his new administration.
The leading candidates for the role have expressed differing perspectives on how Trump should use the protectionist trade policies that he put front and center in his campaign for the White House, while Trump himself has offered seemingly contradictory views.
Billionaire investor Scott Bessent, considered a leading candidate, has talked up tariffs as a negotiating ploy. Another prominent contender, Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick, has expressed more support for broad tariffs. Lutnick is co-chair of Trump’s transition operation and is helping put forward candidates for key roles, including the Treasury Department.
Trump is also looking at other potential candidates as he decides who can best implement his economic agenda — and how big a role tariffs will play.
The president-elect, during this year’s campaign, portrayed the taxes on imports as both a negotiating tool to hammer out better trade terms and as a way to generate revenue to fund tax cuts elsewhere.
The Republican has proposed universal tariffs of as much as 20% and taxing Chinese imports at 60% or more, yet his campaign never filled in key details about how tariffs would be imposed and whether the goal was more about funding the government or pressing trade partners.
The two are competing priorities — achieving sustainable long term revenues from tariffs isn’t possible if they’re a negotiating tool, and sustaining them for the long term could constrain the growth Trump has promised to bring to the country.
The lack of clarity has spilled over to Trump’s choice of treasury secretary, as tariffs run the risk of worsening inflation and also disrupting the stock market gains since the election that have been a point of pride for the president-elect.
Bessent told Bloomberg News in August that he views tariffs as a “one time price adjustment” and “not inflationary,” and that tariffs imposed during a second Trump administration would be directed primarily at China.
In a Fox News op-ed last week, Bessent said that tariffs are “a useful tool for achieving the president’s foreign policy objectives. Whether it is getting allies to spend more on their own…
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