Steven Mnuchin

• Born: December 21, 1962
• Place of Birth: New York, New York

Politician, investor

Place of birth: New York, New York

Education: Yale University

Background

Steven Terner Mnuchin was born December 21, 1962, in New York City, the fourth of five children born to Robert E. Mnuchin and Elaine Terner Cooper. Mnuchin’s father was a partner at Goldman Sachs for three decades before opening an art gallery on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in 1992.

Mnuchin attended Riverdale Country School in the Bronx. After graduating in 1981, Mnuchin enrolled at Yale University, where he obtained a bachelor of arts degree in 1985. In college, he was the publisher of the Yale Daily News and was also initiated into the secret society Skull and Bones. While still at Yale, he also worked at Salomon Brothers investment bank.

Career in Finance

Mnuchin followed in his father’s footsteps after graduation, joining Goldman Sachs in 1985, where he worked for seventeen years. He became a partner in 1994, holding leadership roles in mortgage securities and eventually being named chief information officer.

In 2002, Mnuchin left the firm and turned his attention to hedge funds. Mnuchin spent some months as vice chairman of ESL Investments, owned by Edward Lampert, his college roommate. Shortly thereafter, he worked for famed financier George Soros at SFM Capital Management as executive vice president, co-CIO, and finally, CEO. Then, in 2004, he launched his own fund, Dune Capital Management. With Dune Capital, Mnuchin invested in a pair of projects bearing Donald Trump’s name: Trump International Hotel & Tower Chicago and Trump International Hotel Waikiki. In 2008, Trump sued the lenders involved in the Chicago project, including Dune; the suit was later settled. Dune Capital wound down operations by 2013.

In late 2008, Mnuchin gathered a group of investors—including Soros, technology executive Michael Dell, and hedge fund manager John Paulson—to acquire IndyMac, a Pasadena, California–based subprime mortgage lender, from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which had taken it into conservatorship after its failure during the economic collapse of 2008. In 2009 the group paid $1.55 billion for the lender (which then held an estimated $16 billion in assets), Mnuchin renamed it OneWest Bank, which soon turned a profit and grew it into the biggest bank in Southern California via other acquisitions. In August 2015, he sold OneWest for $3.4 billion to CIT Group.

OneWest’s comparatively higher foreclosure rate and often aggressive tactics in the wake of the financial crisis drew widespread criticism, however. At least 36,000 homes were foreclosed upon during Mnuchin’s tenure. More than 16,000 OneWest foreclosures were on reverse mortgages belonging to older adults. Activists claimed that OneWest foreclosed more often than it modified regular loans, a charge Mnuchin refutes, and advocacy groups have complained to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development that OneWest avoided doing business in minority communities.

After selling OneWest to CIT, Mnuchin stayed on as a member of the bank’s board of directors. He stepped down from the board before assuming his post as head of the treasury.

In addition to his financial career, Mnuchin has also been an executive producer of Hollywood movies. In the mid-2000s, his production company, Dune Entertainment, cofinanced such films as Avatar (2009), the highest-grossing movie to date. Later, in 2013, Dune partnered with director-producer Brett Ratner’s RatPac Entertainment to form RatPac-Dune, which has financed pictures such as TheLEGO Movie (2014), Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), The Lego Batman Movie (2017), and Wonder Woman (2017).

Politics

Before taking office, Mnuchin was a longtime campaign donor. According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, between 1995 and 2016, Mnuchin donated more than $460,000 to politicians, parties, and political groups from both sides of the aisle. He reportedly donated to Democratic presidential contenders Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, as well as Republicans Mitt Romney and Donald Trump. In 2016, despite giving to several Democrats, including California Senator Kamala Harris, he donated $325,000 to conservative candidates.

Somewhat to his surprise, as well as that of friends and acquaintances, Mnuchin became the national finance chairman of the Trump campaign the morning after the candidate won the New York primary in April 2016. He faced a challenging task, with just over six months to put in place a large fundraising campaign for the largely self-funded Trump, paving the way for him to compete in the general election against the well-financed campaign of Hillary Clinton.

Shortly after Trump won the presidential election on November 8, Mnuchin joined his transition team. In late November, Trump announced Mnuchin’s nomination as treasury secretary. Many observers were surprised at the pick, given the dissonance between Trump’s populist appeals against elites and Mnuchin’s long career as a Wall Street financial maven. During his Senate confirmation hearing, Democrats vocally criticized him for not just the harsh foreclosure practices at OneWest but also his failure to report $95 million in assets and managerial positions at eight firms on his financial disclosure forms. Despite an unusually close vote of 53 to 47, Mnuchin was confirmed as US Secretary of the Treasury on February 13, 2017.

During his tenure, which ended in 2021 after Trump lost re-election, Mnuchin was part of the group that wrote the Trump administration's tax reform plan of 2017; supported the administration's trade policy of economic protectionism; and facilitated 2019 negotiations between the governments of Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan about the filling and operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Although Mnuchin and other Republicans insisted the tax plan would pay for itself, in December 2017, the Treasury Department released its analysis of the plan, which concluded that was not the case.

After Trump lost re-election and left office in January 2021, Mnuchin was replaced as Treasury Secretary. He went on to lead Liberty Strategic Capital. In March 2024, the US House passed a bill to force ByteDance, the Chinese company that owned TikTok, to divest or be banned in the United States. Many lawmakers had expressed concern about Chinese influence because of the widespread use of the social media platform in the United States. Shortly after the vote, Mnuchin announced he was forming an investor group to buy TikTok.

Impact

In the early days of Mnuchin’s tenure, he said the United States favored free trade but called for existing agreements to be reexamined and potentially revised. Tax reform was a major goal of his. When questioned on the effects of technological advances on the US economy, he stated he did not worry about robotics and artificial intelligence threatening American jobs in the near future, despite evidence that indicated automation was displacing workers. Mnuchin instead argued that job training was needed and that manufacturing could return to the United States from overseas.

Mnuchin drew criticism when he publicly endorsed The Lego Batman Movie, which his production company had financed; the Office of Government Ethics chose not to investigate the ethics standards violation further after Mnuchin apologized and promised to pursue additional ethics training. Munchin became notable for being one of the few cabinet members not dismissed during the Trump Administration, and he left his position on January 20, 2021. In 2021, Mnuchin began the Liberty Strategic Capital fund focusing on technology investments for private equity investors.

Personal Life

Mnuchin has three children with Heather deForest Crosby, whom he married in September 1999. They divorced in 2014. He became engaged to Louise Linton, a Scottish-born actor and producer, in November 2015; they married in June 2017.

Bibliography

Abelson, Max, and Zachary Mider. “Trump’s Top Fundraiser Eyes the Deal of a Lifetime.” Bloomberg, 31 Aug. 2016, www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-08-31/steven-mnuchin-businessweek. Accessed 6 June 2017.

Goswami, Rohan, and Jesse Pound. "Former Treasury Secretary Mnuchin Is Putting Together an Investor Group to Buy TikTok." CNBC, 14 Mar. 2024, www.cnbc.com/2024/03/14/former-treasury-secretary-mnuchin-is-putting-together-an-investor-group-to-buy-tiktok.html. Accessed 2 Oct. 2024.

Greenfeld, Karl Taro. “From IndyMac to OneWest: Steven Mnuchin’s Big Score.” Bloomberg, 22 March 2012, www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-03-22/from-indymac-to-onewest-steven-mnuchins-big-score. Accessed 6 June 2017.

Izadi, Elahe. “Trump’s Treasury Pick Steven Mnuchin Is behind Some of Hollywood’s Biggest Movies.” The Washington Post, 30 Nov. 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/11/30/trumps-treasury-pick-steven-mnuchin-is-behind-some-of-hollywoods-biggest-movies. Accessed 6 June 2017.

Perlberg, Heather, and Sonali Basak. “Steven Mnuchin Fund Raises $2.5 Billion, Including From Saudi Arabia PIF.” Bloomberg.com, 20 Sept. 2021, www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-20/trump-treasury-secretary-steven-mnuchin-raises-2-5-billion-fund. Accessed 24 Apr. 2023

Rappeport, Alan. “Steven Mnuchin, Treasury Nominee, Failed to Disclose $100 Million in Assets.” The New York Times, 19 Jan. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/us/politics/steven-mnuchin-treasury-secretary-nominee-assets-confirmation.html. Accessed 6 June 2017.

Soergel, Andrew. “Mnuchin ‘Not at All’ Worried about Automation Displacing Jobs.” U.S. News & World Report, 24 Mar. 2017, www.usnews.com/news/articles/2017-03-24/steven-mnuchin-not-at-all-worried-about-automation-displacing-jobs. Accessed 6 June 2017.

Tuttle, Brad. “Here’s Why Treasury Nominee Steve Mnuchin Has Been Called the ‘Foreclosure King.’” Money, 19 Jan. 2017, time.com/money/4639480/steve-mnuchin-treasury-secretary-foreclosures-onewest. Accessed 6 June 2017.

Wieczner, Jen. “Trump Treasury Pick Mnuchin Is Much Richer Than Most People Thought.” Fortune, 11 Jan. 2017, fortune.com/2017/01/11/trump-cabinet-steven-mnuchin-net-worth. Accessed 6 June 2017.

Yglesias, Matthew. "Treasury Department Admits Senate Tax Plan Won't Pay for Itself." Vox, 11 Dec. 2017, www.vox.com/2017/12/11/16761716/treasury-dynamic-analysis-tax. Accessed 2 Oct. 2024.