Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is no longer in the soybean business and the details of his $12.4 million divestiture are now public.
Bessent raised eyebrows in late October when he told ABC’s Martha Raddatz that he, too, felt the pain of the agricultural trade war with China, saying, “I’m actually a soybean farmer.”
The claim set off a frenzy of online memes and commentators skewering the 63-year-old Ivy League graduate rolling up his sleeves and firing up the combine.
In truth, Bessent disclosed early in the Trump Administration that he owned several thousand acres of farm land in North Dakota through a limited liability partnership. He was supposed to divest those holdings 90 days after taking office, by April 28.
In August, government ethics officials warned in a letter to the Senate Finance Committee that the secretary failed to comply with the rules and needed to sell the land. Bessent's Treasury ethics officials explained that the "assets are illiquid and not readily marketable."
