Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Treasury pick was Trump’s No. 1 fundraiser
Mnuchin made name on Wall St.
WASHINGTON — Steven Mnuchin, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to be Treasury secretary, has had a long history as a successful financial executive. He was also head of Trump’s campaign finance operation.
In May, Mnuchin, 53, said he and Trump had been friends for 15 years.
Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross, Trump’s pick to be Commerce secretary, said Wednesday that they were looking forward to working together.
“Our Number One priority is tax reform,” Mnuchin said. “This will be the largest tax change since Reagan. We are going to cut corporate taxes, which will bring huge amounts of jobs back to the United States.”
If approved by the Senate, Mnuchin would follow in the tradition of two previous Treasury secretaries — Robert Rubin in the Clinton administration and Henry Paulson in George W. Bush’s. All had vast Wall Street experience gained from years working at Goldman Sachs.
Yet unlike Rubin and Paulson, Mnuchin would bring no government experience to Treasury, something that could prove a hurdle in navigating the tricky politics of Washington.
After graduating from Yale in 1985, Mnuchin worked for Goldman Sachs for 17 years. He
left in 2002, eventually starting his own investment firm, Dune Capital Management.
As head of this firm, Mnuchin and other investors participated in the purchase of failed mortgage lender IndyMac in 2009 and renamed it OneWest.
Mnuchin became chairman of OneWest, which was sold to CIT Group in 2015. Before the sale, OneWest faced a string of lawsuits over its home foreclosure practices.
As Treasury secretary, Mnuchin would be the administration’s chief economic spokesman, serving as a liaison not only to Wall Street but also to global investors.
Mnuchin will also oversee a sprawling bureaucracy that includes the Internal Revenue Service and the agency that issues millions of Social Security and other benefit checks each month. Treasury also runs the agency that wages the financial war on terrorism.