Trump’s planned Fed decision on Friday comes as the president and the central bank remain in a public standoff over how quickly the Fed should lower interest rates and how independent the institution should be from White House and election politics.
In remarks Thursday night, Trump told reporters, “I’ll be announcing the Fed chair tomorrow morning,” and said the nominee would be “very respected” and known “to everybody in the financial world.” He did not name the person at that time, but he described the pick as something “a lot of people think” would have been possible “a few years ago,” a comment that fueled speculation that Trump had selected Kevin Warsh, who was among the finalists in the 2017 search that ultimately led to Jerome Powell’s selection.
Trump has been sharply critical of Powell for more than a year, arguing that the Fed should cut its benchmark interest rates more drastically to support faster economic growth. The Fed chair has taken a different approach, the report says, and has linked his stance to inflation being elevated in the period when Trump’s tariffs were affecting prices.
According to the reporting, the White House search for a chair nominee has been led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and four names have been identified as known finalists. They include Kevin Warsh, a former Fed governor; Christopher Waller, a current Fed governor; Rick Rieder, an executive with BlackRock; and Kevin Hassett, who is the director of the White House National Economic Council. The report also says Trump previously indicated Hassett was the frontrunner, before more recently saying he wanted Hassett to remain in his current role.
The decision is likely to test the relationship between the presidency and the Fed ahead of Powell’s chair term ending in May. The report describes tensions between Trump and the central bank that have escalated alongside public criticism and additional political pressure around the Fed’s operations, including a note that the Fed received subpoenas from the Justice Department earlier this month.
Powell, for his part, has defended the Fed’s approach to interest-rate decisions as tied to its own assessment and not to presidential preferences. The report says the Fed chair issued a video statement in which he warned, “The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president.”
On the procedural side, the report notes that even though Powell’s chair term ends in about three months, his term as a governor runs through 2028. If Powell chooses to remain on the board of governors, the report says, he could likely block Trump’s ability to shift the board’s control as chair nominations and governance would depend on board seats.
The report also describes how the board’s composition could affect Trump’s options for naming the chair. With seven governors on the board, the report says former President Joe Biden picked three and renominated Powell for a second term as chair. It adds that Stephen Miran is on leave from his job as chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers to fill a governor term that technically ends on Saturday, and it suggests Trump would have to decide whether to select an existing governor as chair or replace Miran to name a new chair nominee.
Powell has not said at a Wednesday news conference whether he would remain on the board, according to the report. The Fed chair instead offered advice to a successor about balancing independence with public accountability, saying, “Don’t get pulled into elected politics — don’t do it,” and adding that Congress provides the Fed’s “window into democratic accountability,” which he described as an “affirmative regular obligation” rather than something the institution can treat passively.
While the president awaits Friday morning’s announcement, the report frames the moment as a potential showdown over whether the Fed’s leadership change becomes another chapter in a campaign to push monetary policy toward faster rate cuts, or a test of how much political pressure the central bank can resist while still engaging with Congress and the public.