Bessent has referred to himself as a soybean farmer and said that he, too, felt the pain of being caught in the middle of the U.S.–China trade war.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he has divested his soybean farm holdings and acknowledged that, despite China’s commitment to buy more U.S. agricultural products, farmers still need support from the federal government.
“I’m involved in the agriculture industry. I run a soybean farm,” Bessent said on Dec. 7 during an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program, while discussing the difficult year faced by U.S. farmers after China drastically cut purchases of American agricultural products, particularly corn and soybeans, in retaliation for Trump administration tariffs.
“I actually just divested it this week as part of my ethics agreement, so I’m out of that business.”
Bessent’s divestiture comes four months after the U.S. Office of Government Ethics (OGE) informed the Senate Finance Committee that he had “failed to timely comply with certain terms” of the ethics agreement he signed before taking office in late January.
Federal officials must sell assets that could be affected by their official duties to avoid real or perceived conflicts of interest.
In a follow-up letter to the Senate committee, OGE said Treasury ethics officials reported that Bessent had committed to completing all remaining divestitures by Dec. 15, including farmland in North Dakota.
According to his financial disclosure filed with the OGE in January, Bessent owned up to $25 million worth of corn and soybean farmland across North Dakota’s Burleigh, Kidder, Eddy, Benson, and Wells counties. He rented out the land through a revenue-sharing arrangement that could generate as much as $1 million a year, depending on crop prices.
Bessent, a hedge fund manager, has referred to himself as a soybean farmer and said that he, too, felt the pain of being caught in the middle of the U.S.–China trade war.
“I probably know more than any Treasury secretary about agriculture since the 1800s,” he told CBS’s Margaret Brennan. “And I can tell you that what farmers need is certainty.”
By Bill Pan
