President Donald Trump announced Friday morning that he is nominating Kevin Warsh as the next Federal Reserve chair.
Warsh, if approved, will replace current chair Jerome Powell when the latter’s term expires in May, The Associated Press reported.
The president wrote on Truth Social announcing Warsh’s nomination, “he will go down as one of the GREAT Fed Chairmen, maybe the best. On top of everything else, he is ‘central casting’ and will never let you down,” The New York Times reported.
He beat out Kevin Hassett, Christopher Waller and Rick Rieder who were all said to be on the short list, according to the Times.
Trump nominated Powell in 2027 to lead the Fed, but the president has frequently spoken out against him for not cutting interest rates fast enough.
Warsh was a front-runner before the president selected Powell in his first term.
Who is Kevin Warsh?
He comes from upstate New York and is the son of a father who manufactured school uniforms, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Warsh went to Stanford University, where the newspaper said, “he developed a knack for networking his way into rooms with people who could help him — and impressing them once he got there.”
Before serving as a member of the Federal Reserve Board from 2006 to 2011, he was an economic aide in President George W. Bush’s administration and had been an investment banker at Morgan Stanley, the AP said.
He was only 35 when he was appointed as a governor of the board, the youngest person to do so.
Typically, Warsh pushed for higher interest rates to control inflation, the opposite of what Trump has been telling Powell to do. The president says the key rate should be 1,% but it is currently about 3.6%
Warsh pushed back on some of the low-interest rate policies during his time on the board during and after the 2008-2009 Great Recession. He also said at the time that he was worried that inflation would accelerate, but it stayed low after the end of the recession.
Recently Warsh has written columns that were in stark contrast to his previous stance, now saying he supports lower interest rates.
He is currently a fellow at the Hoover Institution and a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the AP reported.
Warsh’s nomination requires Senate confirmation.
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