Who Does Trump Want to Be the Next Fed Chair?

President Donald Trump has narrowed his list of potential Federal Reserve Chair picks to succeed Jerome Powell.

Trump told CNBC on August 5 that there are now four people under his consideration: White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, former Fed governor Kevin Warsh, and two more candidates that Trump did not name. He said that he will make a decision “soon.” Powell’s term as chair comes to an end in May 2026, although his term as a governor continues till 2028.

“Kevin and Kevin, both Kevins, are very good,” Trump said. “The two Kevins are doing well. And I have two other people that are doing well.”

He added that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, whom Trump earlier said was “an option” to replace Powell, is not on the list: “I love Scott, but he wants to stay where he is.”

Bessent is conducting the search, and the list of candidates being interviewed in the coming weeks is broader than Trump has indicated, two administration officials told the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. It reportedly includes the Federal Reserve’s two vice chairs, Michelle Bowman and Philip Jefferson; Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan; Fed Governor Christopher Waller; economist Marc Sumerlin, and former St. Louis Fed President James Bullard. Bessent will recommend a shortlist to the President after the interviews.

Who Trump ends up picking could determine both the course of the economy for the next four years and the credibility of the Federal Reserve. Already, economists and policymakers have raised concerns that Trump’s attempts to pressure Powell, whom he has dubbed “Mr. Too Late,” to cut short-term interest rates have undermined the institution’s political independence.

Trump has spent months railing against Powell who has thus far resisted that pressure, and openly suggested that he could replace Powell sooner—which he is not allowed to do except for cause—although he has also publicly said he’s “highly unlikely” to fire Powell.

Trump called a Wall Street Journal report last month “typically untruthful” after it claimed that Bessent made the case to Trump to not fire Powell over legal concerns and economic risks. “Nobody had to explain that to me,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “I know better than anybody what’s good for the Market, and what’s good for the U.S.A.”

Trump has, however, gotten a chance to install a fourth Republican on the Fed’s seven-member board of governors—which includes two nominees from his first term as well as Powell, who was appointed by former President Obama in a bipartisan gesture and nominated to be chairman by Trump in 2017—earlier than expected, after Adriana Kugler, a Democrat, announced on August 1 that she was stepping down ahead of her term expiring in January.

Trump nominated Stephen Miran, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, on a temporary basis. “In the meantime, we will continue to search for a permanent replacement” that would sit on the board for a full 14-year term, the President posted on Truth Social on August 8.

Trump told CNBC days earlier that his pick to replace Kugler may also be his choice to replace Powell. It’s not yet clear, though, whether Miran’s nomination indicates that he could be up for Fed Chair, or whether it’s a matter of buying Trump more time, as some analysts have suggested. Miran’s seat will be open again at the end of January, when Trump has another opportunity to nominate a governor—a prerequisite role for any Fed Chair nominee.

Here’s what to know about Trump’s potential picks.

Michelle Bowman

Bowman was first nominated to the Fed’s board of governors by Trump in 2018 and reappointed in 2020. She was also appointed by Trump to vice chair for supervision, the central bank’s top regulatory role, this year.

Bowman is seen by some as the most politically conservative figure on the board, with the New York Times reporting that she and her family have previously donated to Republicans, mainly in Kansas. She also gained national attention last year after Vice President J.D. Vance, then as a Senator for Ohio, cited one of her speeches in order to back up his claim that immigration is worsening the housing affordability crisis in the U.S.

Bowman’s views on interest rates have broadly aligned with Trump’s. She dissented in favor of a quarter-percentage-point cut when the Fed held interest rates for a fifth time in a row in July, and she said that this month’s weak jobs data reinforces her view that interest rates should be cut. She also said this month that she is increasingly sure Trump’s tariffs “will not present a persistent shock to inflation.”

Inflation has come down from a peak above 9% after the COVID-19 pandemic but has remained above the Fed’s 2% target. The Fed aims to balance price stability through managing inflation with promoting a strong jobs market. Economists have warned that Trump’s tariffs could lead to “stagflation,” where high unemployment stagnates but inflation remains persistently high.

Bowman also dissented against the Fed’s half-point rate cut in September last year, stating that the Fed should have started with a quarter-point-rate cut. The dissension came at a time when Trump claimed that the Fed’s decision to cut interest rates before the November election was politically biased towards the Democrats.

Bowman’s experience differs from many of the other candidates who have more traditional backgrounds in economics. She holds a bachelor’s degree in advertising and journalism from the University of Kansas and a Juris Doctorate from the Washburn University School of Law.

Philip Jefferson

Jefferson was nominated to the board in 2022 by former President Joe Biden, who promoted him to vice chair in 2023. His confirmations received strong bipartisan support. He would be the first Black Fed Chair if chosen.

“Phil Jefferson is someone I would have been 100% comfortable telling President Trump to nominate to the Federal Reserve,” Hassett, who is now White House National Economic Council Director and another contender for the Fed Chair job, said in 2022. “He’s exactly the kind of person I want at the Fed.”

Jefferson has supported Powell’s decisions to hold interest rates steady this year. He said in May that Trump’s tariffs make progress towards the Fed’s 2% inflation target less certain and could slow economic growth.

“If the increases in tariffs announced so far are sustained, they are likely to interrupt progress on disinflation and generate at least a temporary rise in inflation,” Jefferson said at a conference in May organized by the New York Fed after the Fed left rates unchanged. “With the increased risks to both sides of our mandate, I believe that the current stance of monetary policy is well positioned to respond in a timely way to potential economic developments.”

He previously served as vice president for academic affairs and dean of faculty at Davidson College and chaired the economics department at Swarthmore College, among other academic posts. He holds a PhD and master’s degree in economics from the University of Virginia.

Lorie Logan

Logan, who holds a Master of Public Administration degree from Columbia University, was selected by Dallas Fed directors in 2022 to serve as the president and chief executive officer of the state’s Federal Reserve Bank. Before her current post, she worked at the New York Fed for 23 years, including managing its massive $9 billion securities portfolio.

She is widely seen as a centrist in terms of monetary policy, being neither hawkish on inflation nor financial stability, according to analysts. She has supported holding interest rates steady this year in light of potential inflation due to Trump’s tariffs. She also supported last September’s larger-than-expected rate cut, although she said at the time that the Fed should take a more “gradual path” in terms of rate cuts going forward.

Christopher Waller

Waller was nominated to the Fed’s board by Trump in 2020. He previously served as executive vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and has held several roles in academia. Waller holds a PhD and master’s from Washington State University.

Waller dissented, alongside Bowman, on the Fed’s rate-setting panel’s most recent decision to hold borrowing costs in July. It was the first time in 30 years that two governors dissented. “Tariffs are one-off increases in the price level and do not cause inflation beyond a temporary increase,” Waller said in a statement explaining his dissent, pointing to risks to the labor market. “I believe that the wait and see approach is overly cautious, and, in my opinion, does not properly balance the risks to the outlook and could lead to policy falling behind the curve.”

He has reportedly impressed Trump’s advisers by approaching policy through forecasting rather than current data.

“I think that Governor Waller has really built up a really impressive track record in the last two years at the Fed with his predictions about inflation and with his predictions about where Fed policy needed to move to respond to that inflation,” Miran said on Bloomberg Television last week. “He’s done himself a big credit recently as well not coming to the ‘tariff derangement syndrome’ that many others throughout the country but particularly at the Fed seem to have succumbed to.”

Marc Sumerlin

Sumerlin, who holds a master’s degree in applied economics from Johns Hopkins University, served as deputy director of the National Economic Council during the George W. Bush Administration. He also advised Bush during his presidential campaign in 2000.

After leaving the Bush Administration, he co-founded the Lindsey Group with former Fed official Larry Lindsey, before founding Washington-based consulting firm Evenflo Macro, where he works as managing partner.

He penned an op-ed for the Journal this month supporting cutting interest rates in light of revised weaker jobs data.

“The Federal Open Market Committee is worried about inflation, but the economy faces two more-pressing problems: weak hiring and high mortgage rates. If the economy were to fall into recession, it would take at least four years to repair the damage,” he wrote.

He added, “Tariffs are a tax increase, albeit one that is partially paid by foreigners, and tax increases lower inflation because they lower after-tax income.”

Sumerlin reportedly declined to be considered for Trump’s nomination to become Fed Governor in 2019, because he did not want to be paired with Judy Shelton, a controversial figure who was up for another vacant seat at the time. Shelton was never confirmed by the Senate, and her nomination was eventually withdrawn by Biden. A White House spokesperson told Bloomberg that Sumerlin was “never a top-tier candidate” and his withdrawal from consideration was not because of another potential nominee.

James Bullard

Bullard, who has a PhD in economics from Indiana University, served as the president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank from 2008 to 2023, when he left to become the dean of Purdue University’s business school. He recommended Waller for the Fed’s board in 2019, having worked with him at the St. Louis Fed.

Bullard reportedly had “exploratory discussions” with the first Trump Administration in 2019 about filling a vacant seat on the Fed’s board, although he said at the time that he was “happy” in his job in St. Louis. He has, however, indicated that he would take up the role of Fed Chair if offered.

“Fed Chair is of course something I’d love to do,” Bullard said in 2019. “If I ever got that honor, I would certainly take it. I notice the phone has not been ringing off the hook to get that.”

Bullard said in the past that Trump’s first term tax and fiscal policies could boost investment spending, but he has also warned this year that Trump’s tariffs could worsen the economy. “It doesn’t have to work out that way, but this unilateral move [from Trump], abrupt, is setting up a situation where you could get a dramatic downturn in the economy,” he told CNBC in April.

Stephen Miran

Miran has chaired the White House Council of Economic Advisers during Trump’s second term, and he served as a senior adviser for economic strategy at the Treasury Department beginning in April 2020 during Trump’s first term. He resigned from his post at the Treasury after Biden’s inauguration in January 2021.

With a PhD in economics from Harvard University, Miran previously worked in the private sector at Lily Pond Capital Management, Fidelity Investments, and Sovarnum Capital. After leaving the Treasury, he co-founded investment adviser firm Amberwave Partners, left the firm in 2023 for conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute, and joined hedge fund manager Hudson Bay Capital in February 2024.

Miran has been described as the “architect” behind Trump’s tariffs. He laid out a case for tariffs in a November 2024 essay titled “A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System.” He argued that the U.S. dollar has become “the world’s reserve currency,” leading to an overvaluation of the dollar, and that the dollar should thus be weakened over time in part through tariffs. He also suggested a “Mar-a-Lago Accord” that would reform the global monetary system in order to devalue the dollar and rebalance global trade.

He has also been a vocal critic of the Federal Reserve. He argued in an October 2024 essay in Barron’s that “the central bank’s independence is overstated,” claiming that there is “cross-pollination of personnel” and “coordination” between the Fed and the Treasury Department. Alongside economist Nouriel Roubini, Miran also accused former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen of manipulating financial conditions to lower borrowing costs, a claim that Yellen rejected. And Miran has argued that the central bank should be reformed to shorten board members’ terms and give the President the authority to fire governors, among other changes.

He has also, like Trump, criticized Powell for not lowering interest rates.

“What we’re seeing now in real time is a repetition, once again, of this pattern where the President will end up having been proven right,” Miran told MSNBC in July. “The Fed will—with a lag, and probably quite too late—eventually catch up to the President’s view.”

Kevin Hassett

Hassett is a top economic adviser to Trump as the director of the National Economic Council. He formerly served as a senior adviser to Trump during his first presidential term as the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers from 2017 to 2019.

He returned to the White House in 2020 to assist with Trump’s COVID-19 response, during which time he came under fire for using a “cubic model” to project that pandemic deaths would reach zero by mid-May that year.

Hassett is an ardent supporter of Trump’s economic agenda, including Trump’s “big beautiful bill,” tax cuts, and tariffs. He has also defended Trump’s controversial decision to fire Erika McEntarfer, the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, earlier this month after the President baselessly asserted that recent monthly jobs data was “manipulated for political purposes.”

Hassett told CNBC on August 4 that “all over the U.S. government, there have been people who have been resisting Trump everywhere they can” and that a “fresh start” is needed to “make sure that that’s not going to happen in the data agencies.”

A doctoral graduate from the University of Pennsylvania, Hassett was formerly a fellow at Stanford University’s conservative Hoover Institution and previously worked at center-right think tank the American Enterprise Institute.

Kevin Warsh

Warsh became the youngest Fed governor in the central bank’s history in 2006 at the age of 35 and served in that position until 2011, acting as the central bank’s primary liaison to Wall Street during the 2008 financial crisis. He worked as a mergers and acquisitions banker at Morgan Stanley from 1995 to 2002, when he joined the George W. Bush Administration as an economics adviser until being appointed to the Fed.

Warsh has expressed support for lowering interest rates and criticized Powell over his refusal to do so.

“The President’s right to be frustrated with Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve,” Warsh said on Fox News in July. He said at a lecture hosted by the Group of Thirty, an international body of economists and financial leaders, that “the Fed’s current wounds are largely self-inflicted,” and in July told CNBC that the Fed needs “regime change in the conduct of policy” and “a new Treasury-Fed accord, like we did in 1951 after another period where we built up our nation’s debt and we were stuck with a central bank that was working at cross purposes with the Treasury.”

“That’s the state of things now,” he said on CNBC. “So if we have a new accord, then the … Fed chair and the Treasury Secretary can describe to markets plainly and with deliberation, ‘This is our objective for the size of the Fed’s balance sheet.’”

But Warsh has also advocated for higher interest rates in the past, including last year, as well as for free trade, globalization, and the Fed’s political independence, which could clash with Trump’s economic vision.

Warsh is currently a fellow at the Hoover Institution and a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and he serves on the Panel of Economic Advisers of the Congressional Budget Office, which is nonpartisan. He is married to Jane Lauder, whose father, billionaire Estée Lauder heir Ronald Lauder, reportedly pitched the idea of buying Greenland to Trump.

Warsh was reportedly under consideration by Trump for the role of Fed Reserve Chair in 2017. Trump seemed to regret not going with Warsh and ultimately picking Powell at the signing of a phase-one trade agreement with China in January 2020.

“Kevin Warsh. Kevin. Where’s Kevin? I don’t know, Kevin, I could have used you a little bit here. Why weren’t you more forceful when you wanted that job?” Trump said. “I would have been very happy with you.”