It could be said that President-elect Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary nominee Scott Bessent’s plan for the world’s largest economy was inspired by the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
A decade ago, the Japanese prime minister sought to overhaul the economy using a strategy called the “Three Arrows.” The three-pronged approach consisted of increasing government spending, easing monetary policy, and adjusting the economic landscape to bolster growth prospects.
“I became convinced that Abe and his circle of advisers would commit to directing all of the resources of the prime minister’s office to this multipronged and daunting task,” Bessent wrote in a 2022 essay for The International Economy, titled “Abe’s Complicated Legacy.”…