President Trump said he has made his choice for the next Federal Reserve chair, signaling he will soon name a successor for Jerome Powell, whom he has blasted for months for failing to cut interest rates quickly.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump declined to name his pick but said the announcement is imminent, though he is not expect to replace Powell before his term ends in May.
“I know who I am going to pick, yeah,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on his way back to Washington on Sunday, intensifying scrutiny of frontrunner Kevin Hassett and the White House’s push to reshape the central bank’s direction.
“We’ll be announcing it.”
Asked whether Hassett would be the choice, Trump smiled and said: “I’m not telling you, we’ll be announcing it,” according to Axios.
Hassett, Trump’s top economic advisor, played down reports that he’s the frontrunner, dismissing the talk as “rumor” on Sunday.
He cast Trump’s statement on Air Force One as good news for markets.
“Once it became clear that the president’s getting closer to make a decision, the markets really celebrated, interest rates went down, we had one of our best treasury auctions ever,” Hassett told Fox News.
“So, I think that the market expects that there’s going to be a new person at the Fed, and they expect that President Trump’s going to pick a new one,” he continued. “And if he picks me, I’d be happy to serve.”
The president has been lambasting the current Fed chair over the pace of rate cuts, saying he’d “love to get the guy currently in there out right now, but people are holding me back” and that he’d “love to fire his ass.”
Despite unusually high tension between the White House and the central bank, Trump has repeatedly said he wouldn’t fire Powell before his term is up.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is overseeing the selection process, has interviewed all five finalists. In addition to Hassett, they are Kevin Warsh, Chris Waller, Michelle Bowman and Rick Rieder.
White House officials say Trump trusts Hassett, a former Council of Economic Advisers chair and the current director of the National Economic Council.
Markets treated him as the presumptive pick last week after reports surfaced describing him as Trump’s favored choice, briefly pulling the 10-year Treasury yield below 4%.
The selection process for a new chair comes as the Federal Reserve faces internal disagreement over whether to cut rates in December.
Inflation has slowed but remains above target, unemployment has climbed to 4.4%, and key economic data has been delayed by the government shutdown — leaving policymakers without new jobs numbers until after their next meeting.
Powell has maintained the Fed will move “carefully and deliberately”— infuriating the president, who says the central bank is choking growth at a time when voters are growing anxious about stubborn prices and rising borrowing costs.
Trump has leaned on the Fed more aggressively in his second term than in his first, publicly attacking Powell more than 40 times since April alone.
Among other outbursts, Trump has called Powell a “moron” and “clueless” and said he’s “like a golfer who can’t putt.”
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