Trump set to announce replacement for Fed Gov Kugler this week. The Fed chair in waiting?
President Trump said he plans to name a replacement this week for Federal Reserve governor Adriana Kugler, whose unexpected resignation set for this Friday offers the president an opportunity to put in place a successor for Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
“I have a couple of people in mind,” President Trump told reporters Sunday night. “I’ll be announcing that probably over the next couple of days.”
Kugler’s term as a governor was set to expire on Jan. 31. She has served as a Fed governor since Sept. 13, 2023, and will return to Georgetown University as a professor this fall.
Kevin Warsh, a former Fed governor, and Kevin Hassett, the current chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, are thought to be at the top of the list for the next Fed chair and thus possible nominees to replace Kugler.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is leading the search for Powell’s replacement and is also a potential contender, has already sketched out a scenario where the White House appoints someone to fill Kugler’s seat who can then be in the running to succeed Powell next May.
The White House also hopes that Powell decides to leave the Fed Board of Governors when his chairmanship is up, which would open up a second seat that Trump can fill. Powell has not yet said whether he intends to do that; his term as a Fed governor is not up until 2028.
Read more: How much control does the president have over the Fed and interest rates?
Warsh already has a lot of experience navigating the central bank. He served as Fed governor from 2006 until 2011 and became former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke’s liaison to Wall Street during the chaos of the 2008 financial crisis.
He is also a known figure to Trump, who interviewed him for the Fed chair post eight years ago before deciding on Powell. Trump appointed Powell to be Fed chair in 2018 at the direction of then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Former President Joe Biden reappointed Powell in 2022.
Warsh has been critical of the Fed as of late. He has suggested that the Fed could look through increases in inflation from tariffs because it would be a one-time increase in prices.
He’s also argued that the costs involved in renovating the Fed’s headquarters represent one of several examples of how the Fed “has lost its way” and that the American people “need a reformer to fix” the institution and rebuild its credibility.
“Frankly, it’s about breaking some heads,” he said on Fox Business last month, calling for “regime change.”
Back in April, Warsh gave a speech in Washington, D.C., in which he said that the Fed’s “current wounds are largely self-inflicted” and called for a “strategic reset” to ease a loss of credibility and damage to the Fed’s standing.