Politico reports:

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a successful hedge fund manager straight out of central casting, has quickly become one of the administration’s strongest advocates for policies that are upending global trade and roiling financial markets.

The deliberate, wonkish Wall Street veteran who once called for the gradual implementation of new trade barriers has transformed into a bullhorn for President Donald Trump’s MAGA 2.0 agenda, making it clear that short-term market reactions are secondary to administration priorities such as sweeping tariffs.

As financial markets suffered the most precipitous drop in years this week, Bessent went on television earlier this month and argued that the U.S. needs to “detox” itself off government spending. And he raised eyebrows in a recent speech by declaring that “access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American Dream.” He also said he was “less concerned” about the short-term economic impact of tariffs.

When pressed on a recent market sell-off that pushed down the S&P 500 by more than 10 percent from its recent peak, he said that “corrections are healthy.”

“What’s not healthy is straight up, that you get these euphoric markets. That’s how you get a financial crisis,” he said during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “I’m not worried about the markets. Over the long term, if we put good tax policy in place, deregulation and energy security, the markets will do great.”

This wasn’t what many on Wall Street expected.

“He definitely has not played the role to date that the markets had expected,” said Sarah Bianchi, a senior managing director at investment bank advisory firm Evercore ISI. “It’s always hard for anyone to figure out when and how to go to the president and say you need a big course correction — and it’s particularly hard in Trump 2.0.”

Bessent’s muted reassurances to financial markets shows there may be no one in the administration willing to stand in the way of Trump’s emboldened mandate for reshaping U.S. economic policy. Stock market convulsions, along with the advice of conventional economic policymakers like Trump’s first Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, helped temper the president’s protectionist and potentially calamitous priorities during his previous stint in the White House.

Now, “whatever the guard rails that were in place the first administration no longer exist,” said one former Trump administration official, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. [Continue reading…]