President Donald Trump is checking his list of potential Federal Reserve chairs twice.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has been leading the search, said that Trump could name his nominee to replace Fed Chair Jerome Powell by Christmas.
“I think there’s a very good chance that the president will make an announcement before Christmas,” Bessent told CNBC in late November. “But it’s his prerogative, whether it’s before the Christmas holidays or in the new year. But I think things are moving along very well.”
No matter who Trump selects, Bessent said he wants a less prominent central bank.
“I think it’s time for the Fed just to move back into the background, like, it used to do, calm things down and work for the American people,” Bessent said.
Powell’s term expires next May, but hasn’t stopped the White House from aggressively searching for his replacement.
Here are the five finalists.
Christopher Waller
Fed Gov. Christopher Waller told Fox News that he thought his most recent conversation with Bessent went well.
“I talked to Scott about 10 days ago. We had a nice, a great, meeting,” Waller told Fox Business in late November.
Waller said that the White House is looking for someone with “experience.” It’s not clear what experience that entails, but of the reported finalists, only three have experience serving on the central bank.
“I think they are looking for someone who has merit, experience, and knows what they are doing in the job, and I think I fit that,” he said.
Just before Thanksgiving, Waller dethroned White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett as the favorite of leading prediction markets. On both Polymarket and Kalshi, Waller holds a narrow edge over Hassett.
Waller, a longtime regional Fed official, was seen as a convention pick when Trump nominated him to the central bank in 2019. Simultaneously, Trump also nominated Judy Shelton, a former campaign advisor and a Fed critic. The fight over Shelton’s nomination soon spilled over onto Waller’s.
In December 2020, the Senate confirmed Waller 48-47, the narrowest margin for any Fed governor since 1980, per The New York Times.
In July, Waller joined Gov. Michelle Bowman (another Trump first-term pick) in opposing the Fed’s decision not to cut interest rates, the first dual dissent in more than 30 years.
Kevin Hassett
Before joining Trump’s orbit, Hassett advised a succession of Republican presidential nominees on economic policy, including George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney.
As of late November, Hassett has lost his once commanding lead on prediction markets. He now trails Waller.
During Trump’s first term, Hassett served as director of the president’s Council of Economic Advisors. He returned to the White House during the COVID-19 pandemic and was severely criticized for publishing a model showing coronavirus deaths hitting zero by May 15, 2020.
In October 1999, Hassett cowrote with journalist Jason Glassman “Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market.” Some economists have heavily criticized the book, largely because the index took more than 22 years to reach that threshold.
Kevin Warsh
Trump told reporters in September that Hassett, Waller, and Warsh were “the top three” to replace Powell.
Back in his first term, Trump reportedly considered Warsh to lead the Fed before he chose to nominate Powell in 2017.
Warsh spent his early years at Morgan Stanley, working as a specialist in mergers and acquisitions. President George W. Bush nominated him to the Fed in 2006 after Warsh served as an economic advisor in the Bush White House.
Drawing on his Wall Street ties, Warsh played a pivotal role in the central bank’s response to the 2008 global financial crisis. When he left the Fed in 2011, the Times called him the Fed’s chief liaison to Wall Street.
From the sidelines, Warsh has echoed Trump’s criticism of Powell, calling for “regime change” at the Fed.
“The specter of the miss they made on inflation, it has stuck with them,” Warsh told CNBC in July. “So one of the reasons why the president, I think, is right to be pushing the Fed publicly is we need regime change in the conduct of policy.”
Michelle Bowman
In 2018, Trump appointed Federal Reserve Gov. Michelle Bowman to the central bank.
After confirmation, she was reappointed in 2020. In June, she was narrowly confirmed as the vice chair of supervision.
Bowman started as an intern for Sen. Bob Dole. During the George W. Bush administration, she held posts at FEMA and the Homeland Security Department. She was vice president at Farmers and Drovers Bank in Kansas, her family’s bank, before becoming the state’s top banking official.
In September 2024, Bowman became the first Fed governor to vote against an interest rate decision since 2005. In July, she again voted against holding rates steady, though this time Waller joined her dissent.
Rick Rieder
There’s also a big Wall Street name on Trump’s shortlist.
Rick Rieder, chief investment officer of global fixed income at BlackRock, has spent decades on Wall Street, dating back to his time at Lehman Brothers.
Rieder is responsible for managing roughly $2.4 trillion in assets, per BlackRock. He’s served as a member of the Fed’s Investment Advisory Committee on Financial Markets.
The hopefuls who appear to have missed the cut
Trump’s shortlist at one point reportedly had almost a dozen names.
CNBC previously reported that the following are no longer under consideration: David Zervos, Managing Director and Chief Market Strategist at Jefferies; Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan; former St. Louis Fed President James “Jim” Bullard; Fed Gov. Philip Jefferson; and Marc Sumerlin, a former economic advisor to President George W. Bush.
Former Fed Gov. Larry Lindsey told CNBC that he withdrew from contention.
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