WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said he plans to announce his choice for chairman of the Federal Reserve on Friday morning, a long-awaited decision that could set up a showdown on whether the U.S. central bank preserves its independence from the White House and electoral politics.
For the past year, the president has aggressively attacked Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whose term as the head of the U.S. central bank ends in May. Trump maintains that Powell should cut the Fed’s benchmark interest rates more drastically to fuel faster economic growth, while the Fed chair has taken a far more judicious approach in the wake of Trump’s tariffs because inflation is already elevated.
“I’ll be announcing the Fed chair tomorrow morning,” Trump told reporters Thursday night as he went into a screening of the documentary “Melania” about his wife. “It’s going to be, somebody that is very respected, somebody that’s known to everybody in the financial world. And I think it’s going to be a very good choice. I hope so.”
Trump stayed relatively cryptic about his pick. His search was led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent with four known finalists: Kevin Warsh, a former Fed governor; Christopher Waller, a current Fed governor; Rick Rieder, an executive with the financial firm BlackRock; and Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council. Trump previously suggested Hassett was the frontrunner, only to recently say that he wanted him to remain in his current post.
Trump did say on Thursday night that “a lot of people think that this is somebody that could have been there a few years ago,” fueling speculation that he had chosen