In what seems like a rotating game of tag, with Donald Trump always being the “tagger,” the latest “it” guy — or, as Trump might aptly put it, “it-iot — is Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who this week proved yet again that when you get touched by Donald Trump, it never ends well. Ever.
There’s not enough space in this column to name all the people who have been burned after entering Trump’s orbit. Bessent, unlike others before him, sounded like a solid choice for Treasury secretary when he was nominated and confirmed. He got a whopping 69 votes in the Senate which, in the Trump era, is about as close to unanimous as you can get.
But Bessent’s stock, if you’ll pardon the pun, has been diminished. And this week, he demonstrated that the administration’s favorite approach to international conflict — bully first, build a coalition later, and brag about nothing at the end — works about as well at the Treasury Department as it does at the Pentagon.
Bessent arrived at the G20 finance meeting in Asheville asking the world’s finance ministers to unify behinda sanctions campaign against Iran. He left mostly empty-handed, having annoyed allies by inviting Russia’s finance minister and asking countries to join in sanctions while the United States simultaneously punishes some of those same allies with tariffs, most jarringly Canada.
He also left major business mediaorganizations out of covering the meeting.
The results were predictable. Bessent left the G20 without a joint communiquébecause China’s finance minister vetoed the U.S.-drafted text, blocking the required consensus.
But while Bessent was trying to persuade the world to unite against Iran, China’s President Xi Jinping was on the other side of the world doing something far more consequential.
In Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Xi joined Vladimir Putin, India’s Narendra Modi and seven other heads of state at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s anniversary summit to counter U.S. influence. And unlike the G20, they issued a joint declaration about Iran that reads like a direct answer to everything Bessent (And Hegseth!) spent the week asking for.
The bloc explicitly rejected “unilateral coercive measures,” defended Iran’s right to pursue peaceful nuclear development and condemned U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iranian territory as violations of international law.
Then came the kicker: Putin separately pledged to keep supplying Iran with the “essential goods” it needs to get through the war.
So much for CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s trip to Russia last week to warn them to stop violating U.S. sanctions and providing military support to Tehran. Putin knows how to make Trump look like the world’s biggest dunce.
The Trump administration seems to believe that countries just trip over themselves to help America because America is a military and economic superpower, or we used to be, until Trump, Hegseth, Bessent, et al. came along and screwed it all up.
But here’s a brainless thought: Don’t sanctions work better when allies participate? And don’t they work better when you’re not punishing those allies with an absurd game of whack-a-mole tariffs? Further, diplomatic pressure works better when countries trust the person applying it. And coalitions work better when you actually consult the people you want in them.
Bessent, because he’s now a limp appendage to Trump, failed spectacularly on all fronts.
Bessent’s decision to invite Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov to Asheville, his first in-person G20 appearance since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, was particularly tone-deaf. European allies were not pleased — at all. Germany’s finance minister called the invitation “troubling” to Bessent’s face, and when it came time for the G20’s traditional group photo, delegation after delegation refused to stand next to the Russian minister.
Treasury ultimately released an official photo with Russia’s seat conspicuously empty. Talk about shadow diplomacy. How do you build a coalition by informing people of your decision after you’ve already made it? Just another obvious question.
Then there are the tariffs, which turn the whole trip into a joke Bessent told on himself.
He spent the summit pushing “Operation Economic Outcast,” his laughable “D-Day” campaign to pressure countries into cutting off trade with Iran, while the same administration was fighting with Canada over tariffs. Canada, as you, dear reader, already know, is one of America’s closest and most reliable allies.
Bessent tried to save face by touting the fact that 19 of the 20 nations agreed that China’s export practices were unsustainable. But when the G20 requires consensus and China vetoed it, there was no joint communiqué at the conclusion of the summit.
And while Bessent was flailing in the mountains of North Carolina, the other side was demonstrating exactly how ineffective America has become, and how America’s haphazard and edict-driven diplomacy is an utter failure.
Hegseth started a war without a coalition, without clear objectives and without an endgame. Bessent’s doing the same thing with these willy-nilly sanctions for Iran. Not only did Putin say Russia would help Iran economically, but it was revealed that Russia was helping Iran militarily, too, by helping Tehran develop advanced supersonic cruise missiles designed to target U.S. warships and aircraft carriers in the Middle East.
If America, via Hegseth and Bessent, only ends up with egg on its face, we will be extremely and extraordinarily lucky.
To help save face, and avoid embarrassment, though, both Hegseth and Bessent have resorted to freezing out the media. Hegseth has heavily restrictedthe media by trying to ban them, physically relocating them and not doing press conferences. All of this, mind you, during a war.
Apparently unwilling to let anyone else monopolize the assault on the free press, Bessent denied credentials to prominent economic and policy reporters from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg News.
And so, after all the bluster, tariffs, sanctions, the empty chair and the press restrictions, Scott Bessent has earned himself a new distinction: Trump’s top fool. Not merely because he has been foolish enough to turn American economic diplomacy into an international game of whack-a-mole, but because he has helped make America look like the fool.
And that may be the most dangerous part of all. Under Trump, being a loyalist increasingly means being willing to embarrass yourself on the spot, and, in the process, embarrass the country you supposedly serve. Bessent hasn’t just mastered this art. He’s getting to be very good at it.
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