Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a hundred-millionaire, wants America’s farmers to know he’s just like them and they are all in this together.
American soybean farmers have had a rough go of it lately, with China boycotting the purchase of U.S. soybeans. Never fear, though. Bessent knows exactly what you’re going through.
“In case you don’t know it, I’m actually a soybean farmer, so I have felt this pain too,” Bessent shared on ABC News on Sunday.
This is nonsense on so many levels.
First, Forbes estimates Bessent’s net worth to be about $600 million, so he probably is feeling no pain. In contrast, those who run small farms often have to work side gigs to make ends meet, and over three-quarters of total farm household income is from off-farm jobs. After accounting for all the costs that go into farming, small family farms make about $44,000 per year on average.
Next, Bessent doesn’t farm a thing. Instead, he owns substantial farmland in North Dakota, which he rents out. The land is worth up to $25 million, and the rental income pulls in between $100,000 and $1 million per year for him.
In other words, he’s a landlord.
A farmer drives a combine down a row of soybeans in Indiana, in 2019.
You are probably wondering how Bessent was allowed to keep his farm after starting work in the Trump administration, and you’re not alone. Bessent has been allowed to keep some of his private holdings, including that farmland. Bessent was supposed to divest of certain holdings within 90 days of being confirmed, But, in a neat trick, Bessent has avoided it, promising now that he will comply by Dec. 15.
Well, except for the things Bessent has unilaterally decided he will not divest from. That includes a private equity fund and his investments in a drug development company and a flavored water company. According to Bessent, it is just too difficult to see them, and the government ethics office just did him a solid and said those magically do not pose any conflicts of interest.
Bessent hasn’t sold his farmland, either. In theory, he is required to sell that by Dec. 15, but before he does that—if he does it at all—he’s going to do a wee bit of Trump-style grifting. See, as the treasury secretary, he is negotiating a soybean deal with China, which stands to enrich Bessent, the faux-farmer. Neat.
But he’s not in this for the money, nosiree. “The honor of serving the American people under President Trump can’t be ascribed a dollar value,” he told The New York Times.
Sure.
Bessent’s attempt to show he is in touch with the needs of the common man, the workaday farmer struggling to make ends meet, is ridiculous. The only part of farming he engages in is counting his delicious passive income while other people do the work.
