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President-elect Donald Trump namedhedge fund mogul Scott Bessentas the next Treasury secretary on Friday, ending a rough-and-tumble race that saw fierce jockeying among power players across Wall Street.

I am most pleased to nominate Scott Bessent to serve as the 79th Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, Trump wrote in his announcement, posted on Truth Social.

Scott is widely respected as one of the World’s foremost International Investors and Geopolitical and Economic Strategists, the president-elect said of this Treasury pick.

Bessent “got the thumbs up” late Thursday during a meeting with Trump, 78, at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., one source close to the situation told The Post.

A flurry of last-minute media reports had floated several candidates for the job. Late Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that financier Kevin Warsh had met with Trump on Wednesday about the Treasury post — and possibly replacing Jerome Powell as Fed chairman when his term expires in 2026.

Trump also met about the Treasury role with Marc Rowan, the billionaire boss of buyout firm Apollo Global Management, at Mar-a-Lago earlier this week.

Bessent, the 62-year-old founder of Key Square Group, has repeatedly backed the president-elects pro-tariff stance in a series of op-eds and media appearances over the past year.

Scott’s story is that of the American Dream, Trump said Friday, noting that Bessent has long been a strong advocate of the America First Agenda.

On the eve of our Great Country’s 250th Anniversary, he will help me usher in a new Golden Age for the United States, as we fortify our position as the World’s leading Economy, Center of Innovation and Entrepreneurialism, Destination for Capital, while always, and without question, maintaining the U.S. Dollar as the Reserve Currency of the World, he added.

Unlike in past Administrations, we will ensure that no Americans will be left behind in the next and Greatest Economic Boom, and Scott will lead that effort for me, and the Great People of the United States of America.

A source close to the Trump transition team told the Post earlier on Friday that the hedge fund executive was “being vetted” for the role ahead of a formal announcement.

“If you want to bring a genius into that job who is loyal to the president, Scott is the right guy,” one source close to the situation said.

One faction of Trump World had been pushing for Bessent for weeks, trying to outmaneuver Howard Lutnick — the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and co-chair of Trump’s transition team — in what had reportedly escalated into a bitter “knife fight” for the coveted role.

One insider, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Lutnick, a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, was eventually handed the post of Commerce Secretary “to calm things down.”

After Lutnick exited the Treasury race, sources said Trump continued to do interviews to hash out his options. Bessent and Rowan were both spotted at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday.

“All the top investors and hedge funds said Scott Bessent is their number one pick because of his understanding of macroeconomics,” said one veteran Wall Street insider.

A source briefed on Rowan’s interview, meanwhile, said the 62-year-old was “an anti-tariff guy and that was a non-starter for the president.”

Another staunch Trump loyalist and major donor, billionaire hedge fund boss John Paulson, ruled himself out of an administration post just one week after the Nov. 5 election.

A native of South Carolina, Bessent previously served as chief investment officer for George Soros and was instrumental in the Hungarian-born money man’s “Black Wednesday” trade in 1992.

The bet against the British pound “broke the Bank of England”, raking in an eye-watering $1 billion payday for Soros that cemented his reputation as a titan of global finance.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal earlier this month, Bessent said Trump’s second presidential term would usher in “a revitalized economy for all Americans.”

Bessent also lashed out at the Biden-Harris administration for presiding over four years of “reckless spending” that has seen Uncle Sam’s debt pile hit an eye-watering $35 trillion this year.

“The Biden administrations mismanagement has created serious challenges that Mr. Trump will need to overcome,” Bessent stated in the Nov. 10 op-ed, adding that Trump “has a mandate to re-privatize the US economy through deregulation and tax reform to spur the supply-side growth that he delivered in his first term.”

Large parts of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts expire next year, giving Bessent the chance to help shape fiscal policy under the incoming commander-in-chief.

My Administration will restore Freedom, Strength, Resilience, and Efficiency to our Capital Markets, Trumps announcement continued. We will reinvigorate the Private Sector, and help curb the unsustainable path of Federal Debt.

As a lifelong Champion of Main Street America and American Industry, Scott will support my Policies that will drive U.S. Competitiveness, and stop unfair Trade imbalances, work to create an Economy that places Growth at the forefront, especially through our coming World Energy Dominance, he added. Together, we will Make America Rich Again, Prosperous Again, Affordable Again, and, most importantly, Great Again!

The president-elect has already tapped Tesla titan Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency and tighten up the federal government’s purse strings.

Diana Glebova contributed reporting.

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Technology

Texas Instruments’ stock falls on weak forecast

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Texas Instruments' stock falls on weak forecast

The Texas Instruments headquarters in Dallas, Texas, on Jan. 21, 2024.

N. Johnson | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Texas Instruments reported second-quarter results on Tuesday that beat analysts’ expectations for revenue and earnings. But the stock fell in extended trading due to a third-quarter forecast that missed estimates.

Here’s how the chipmaker did versus LSEG consensus estimates:

  • Earnings per share: $1.41 vs. $1.35 expected
  • Revenue: $4.45 billion vs. $4.36 billion expected

Texas Instruments said it expects current-quarter earnings between $1.36 and $1.60 per share, while analysts were looking for $1.50 per share. The company forecast revenue of $4.45 billion to $4.8 billion, for a midpoint of $4.625 billion. Analysts were expecting revenue of $4.59 billion.

Revenue increased 16% in the second quarter from $3.82 billion in the same period a year earlier. Sales in the company’s analog chip business, its largest, rose 18% to $3.5 billion, surpassing the StreetAccount estimate of $3.39 billion for the segment.

Net income rose 15% to $1.3 billion, or $1.41 per share, from $1.13 billion, or $1.22 per share, a year ago.

Texas Instruments is a key supplier of legacy semiconductors for automotive and industrial uses.

As of Tuesday’s close, Texas Instruments shares were up 15% for the year on broader market optimism for chips. In June, the company said it would spend $60 billion to expand chipmaking factories in Texas and Utah, a move that was praised by the Trump administration in its push to bring more technology manufacturing to the U.S.

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Environment

This $900 million solar farm in Texas is going 100% to data centers

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This 0 million solar farm in Texas is going 100% to data centers

Enbridge is going big on solar again in Texas, and Meta is snapping up all the solar power it can get.

Last month, Electrek reported that the Canadian oil and gas pipeline giant just launched its first solar farm in Texas. Now it’s given the green light to Clear Fork, a 600 megawatt (MW) utility-scale solar farm already under construction near San Antonio. The project is expected to come online in summer 2027.

Once it’s up and running, every bit of Clear Fork’s electricity will go to Meta Platforms under a long-term contract. Meta will use the solar power to help run its energy-hungry data centers entirely on clean energy.

The solar farm project’s cost is around $900 million. Enbridge says it expects Clear Fork to boost the company’s cash flow and earnings starting in 2027.

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Enbridge EVP Matthew Akman said the project reflects “growing demand for renewable power across North America from blue-chip companies involved in technology and data center operations.”

Meta’s head of global energy, Urvi Parekh, added that the company is “thrilled to partner with Enbridge to bring new renewable energy to Texas and help support our operations with 100% clean energy.”

Meta’s first multi-gigawatt data center, Prometheus, is expected to come online in 2026.

Clear Fork is part of a growing trend: tech giants like Meta, Amazon, and Google are racing to lock down renewable energy contracts as they expand their fleets of AI-ready data centers, which use massive amounts of electricity.


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Technology

Trump met with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos at the White House last week, sources say

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Trump met with Amazon's Jeff Bezos at the White House last week, sources say

Jeff Bezos, founder and executive chairman of Amazon, takes the stage during The New York Times’ annual DealBook Summit, at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City on Dec. 4, 2024.

Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images

President Donald Trump met with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos at the White House last week, CNBC has learned.

The meeting between Trump and Bezos, one of the world’s richest men, lasted for more than an hour, according to two people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the conversation was private.

Amazon declined to comment on the meeting. A spokesperson for Bezos didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The nature and exact timing of the visit couldn’t be learned.

A Gulfstream G700 private jet linked to Bezos landed in Dulles, Virginia, outside Washington, on July 14 before taking off the next day, according to Jack Sweeney, a programmer who tracks flight data from jets owned by Elon Musk, Bill Gates and others.

Bezos, who also owns rocket company Blue Origin, has cozied up to Trump during his second term in the White House. Trump frequently hurled insults at Bezos during his first term, largely because of the Amazon founder’s ownership of The Washington Post.

Read more CNBC Amazon coverage

Bezos joined a swath of tech CEOs on stage at Trump’s inauguration in January after donating $1 million to his inaugural fund.

The Trump administration praised Bezos for his decision to revamp the Post’s editorial pages to focus on “personal liberties and free markets.”

In April, Trump said Bezos, who stepped down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021, was “terrific” and “a good guy” after the billionaire assured Trump that the e-commerce giant had no plans to display tariff-related surcharges on its website.

More recently, Bezos has reportedly sought to capitalize on the dramatic falling-out between Trump and Musk, who spent more than $250 million to help Trump win a second White House term and previously led the government-slashing initiative called the Department of Government Efficiency.

Bezos competes with Musk, who is the CEO of SpaceX, through Blue Origin and Project Kuiper, Amazon’s low-Earth orbit satellite internet venture.

After Trump and Musk’s relationship soured, Bezos spoke with Trump on several occasions, while Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp traveled to the White House, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The conversations centered in part on government contracts, according to the Journal.

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