WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday that he'll nominate hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, an advocate for deficit reduction, to serve as his next treasury secretary.

Trump also said he would nominate Russell Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget, a position Vought held during Trump's first presidency. Vought was closely involved with Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for Trump's second term that he tried to distance himself from during the campaign.

The announcements showed how Trump was fleshing out the financial side of his new administration. Although Bessent is closely aligned with Wall Street and could earn bipartisan support, Vought is known as a Republican hardliner.

Trump said Bessent would "help me usher in a new Golden Age for the United States," while Vought "knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government."

Bessent and Vought were only two of several personnel decisions that Trump disclosed Friday evening.

Trump said he chose Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, an Oregon Republican, as his labor secretary, and Scott Turner, a former football player who worked in Trump's first administration, as his housing secretary.

In addition, Trump rounded out his health team. He chose Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a general practitioner and Fox News contributor, to be surgeon general; Dr. Dave Weldon, a former Republican congressman from Florida, to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Dr. Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon, as head of the Food and Drug Administration. Trump previously announced he is nominating Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime spreader of conspiracy theories about vaccines, as health secretary.

Alex Wong was named as principal deputy national security adviser, while Sebastian Gorka will serve as senior director for counterterrorism. Wong worked on issues involving Asia during Trump's first term, and Gorka is a conservative commentator who spent less than a year in Trump's White House.

Bessent, 62, is the founder of hedge fund Key Square Capital Management, after having worked on and off for Soros Fund Management since 1991. If confirmed by the Senate, he would be the nation's first openly gay treasury secretary.

He told Bloomberg in August that attacking the U.S. national debt should be a priority, which includes slashing government programs and other spending.

"This election cycle is the last chance for the U.S. to grow our way out of this mountain of debt without becoming a sort of European-style socialist democracy," he said then.

As of Nov. 8, the national debt stands at $35.94 trillion, with both the Trump and Biden administrations having added to it. Trump's policies added $8.4 trillion to the national debt, while the Biden administration increased the national debt by $4.3 trillion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a fiscal watchdog.

Even as he pushes to lower the national debt by stopping spending, Bessent has backed extending provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which Trump signed into law in his first year in office. 

Vought, 48, was the head of the Office of Management and Budget from mid-2020 to the end of Trump's first term in 2021, having previously served as the acting director and deputy director. 

After Trump's initial term ended, Vought founded the Center for Renewing America, a think tank that describes its mission as renewing "a consensus of America as a nation under God."

The Center for Renewing America released its own 2023 budget proposal entitled "A Commitment to End Work and Weaponized Government." The proposal envisioned $11.3 trillion worth of spending reductions over 10 years and about $2 trillion in income tax cuts in order to bring the budget into surplus by 2032.

Trump's choice for labor secretary, Chavez-DeRemer, 56, narrowly lost her reelection bid earlier this month.

Chavez-DeRemer is one of a few House Republicans to endorse the "Protecting the Right to Organize" Act that would allow more workers to conduct organizing campaigns and would add penalties for companies that violate workers' rights. The act would also weaken "right-to-work" laws that allow employees in more than half the states to avoid participating in or paying dues to unions that represent workers at their places of employment.

Trump said in a statement that she would help "ensure that the Labor Department can unite Americans of all backgrounds behind our Agenda for unprecedented National Success."