Waller emerges as favourite for Fed chair among Trump team

[WASHINGTON, DC] Federal Reserve governor Christopher Waller is emerging as a top candidate to serve as the central bank’s chair among US President Donald Trump’s advisers as they look for a replacement for Jerome Powell, according to people familiar with the matter.

Trump advisers are impressed with Waller’s willingness to move on policy based on forecasting, rather than current data, and his deep knowledge of the Fed system as a whole, the people said. Waller has met with the president’s team about the role, but has yet to meet with Trump himself, the people said on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
Kevin Wash, a former Fed official, and Kevin Hassett, currently Trump’s National Economic Council director, also remain in contention for the job, the people said, which will open up when Powell’s tenure as chair expires in May 2026. 

“President Trump will continue to nominate the most competent and experienced individuals,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement. “Unless it comes from President Trump himself, however, any discussion about personnel decisions should be regarded as pure speculation.”

A representative for the Fed declined to comment.

“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,” Stephen Miran, who chairs the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Thursday (Aug 7).

Trump said on Wednesday that the administration has narrowed the list of candidates for Fed chair to three people. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Vice-President JD Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick are on the search committee, Trump said.

Hassett has met with Trump to discuss the chair job and has also impressed both the president and the team, Bloomberg News reported. Warsh interviewed for the job in 2017 but was ultimately passed over for Powell. In November, he was also considered to serve as Treasury secretary. 

The search for a new Fed chair is happening simultaneously with talks to fill a soon-to-be vacant slot from Adriana Kugler’s early departure from the Fed board. Trump said he planned to fill that seat with a temporary governor, who would serve for just a handful of months. 

Later, he will name a candidate for a 14-year Fed governor term which opens up in early 2026. Trump is likely to appoint someone to that seat who has stated a preference for lower interest rates.
Waller’s dissent
Last week, Waller was one of two Fed board members to vote against the central bank’s decision to hold its benchmark rate steady for a fifth consecutive time. He and his colleague Michelle Bowman, both Trump nominees, preferred a quarter-point reduction, citing growing signs of labour-market weakness. 

A few days after the Fed announced its decision to hold interest rates, a jobs report showed that job growth cooled sharply over the previous three months, lending credence to Waller and Bowman’s dissent.

Waller’s views differed from those of Powell and other policymakers on the board, who have so far described the labour market as broadly solid and have supported a patient approach to adjusting rates so that the central bank can continue to gauge how Trump’s tariffs will impact the economy. That view has frustrated the president, who has repeatedly assailed Powell for not cutting rates sooner.

Waller, a PhD economist, has attracted the attention of Trump’s economic advisers over the past year as the president talked about the economy while on the campaign trail. 

Fed experience

Trump nominated Waller to the Fed in 2020. Before that, he had served as a research director and executive vice-president at the St Louis Fed. In 2020, senators voted 48-47 to support Waller’s nomination to the Fed board. 

As a Fed governor in 2022, Waller engaged in a public debate with influential economists outside the Fed, including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, with his argument that the central bank could successfully lower the post-pandemic inflation without significantly raising unemployment. In the end, Waller proved right as inflation came back below 3 per cent and unemployment never moved back above 4.2 per cent.
Trump’s dissatisfaction with Powell has triggered questions about whether his next pick to lead the Fed would back monetary policy independence for the central bank. Waller said in April that the Fed’s independence is “critical to the well-functioning of the US economy”.
He noted that markets, Fed watchers and consumers all criticise the chair. 
“If you don’t like being criticised, don’t take the job,” Waller said. “The president is free to say what he wants to on policy, just like anybody else.”
Last month, Waller told Bloomberg Television that he hasn’t yet directly heard from the president about the Fed chair role.  
“If the president contacted me and said, ‘I want you to serve,’ I would do it,” he said in July. “But he has not contacted me.” BLOOMBERG