‘Inept, incompetent, craven’: Scott Bessent struggles to clean up the president’s mess

There’s little optimism about treasury secretary’s ability to handle Trump’s tariffs, Iran sanctions and colossal US debt

History remembers https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/d-day">Gen Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the allied forces in Europe during the second world war, for his role in the D-day invasion of Normandy.

Whether Scott Bessent will achieve similar posterity as the face of the “economic D-day” in https://www.theguardian.com/world/iran">Iran remains to be seen.

The US treasury secretary, already trying to manage a $40tn national debt pile, this week took charge of https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/donaldtrump">Donald Trump’s effort to https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/24/us/politics/trump-bessent-iran-economic-d-day.html">reverse-engineer his war of choice.

Whereas the US would typically take on an adversary with diplomacy, sanctions and military force, in that order, the US president started with a six-month bombing campaign and now hopes that economic isolation can finish the job.