NEW YORK, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he is nominating Kevin Warsh, a former Federal Reserve governor, to be the next chair of the central bank.
The nomination, which came two days after the Fed's decision to keep the federal funds rate unchanged at 3.5 percent to 3.75 percent, needs to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
"I have known Kevin for a long period of time, and have no doubt that he will go down as one of the GREAT Fed Chairmen, maybe the best," said Trump in his Truth Social post announcing the selection.
"On top of everything else, he is 'central casting,' and he will never let you down," Trump said.
Warsh, 55, currently serves as the Shepard Family Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institution and a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is also a partner of Stanley Druckenmiller at Duquesne Family Office LLC.
Warsh became the youngest Fed Governor at 35, and served as a member of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System from 2006 until 2011.
Picking Warsh likely wouldn't ripple markets because of his past Fed experience, local media reported on Friday. Wall Street holds that Warsh wouldn't always do Trump's bidding.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell was nominated by Trump in November 2017. His second four-year-term as Fed chair will end in May 2026.
Ever since Powell's confirmation in 2018, Trump has been persistently exerting pressure on Powell to aggressively lower interest rates. Even after three successive rate cuts in the latter part of 2025, Trump kept pressing for lower rates and criticizing Powell for cost overruns at the Fed's massive renovation of its Washington, D.C., headquarters.
In mid-January, the Justice Department subpoenaed Powell, threatening a criminal indictment related to Powell's testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in June 2025 over the central bank's multi-billion-dollar project to renovate its headquarters.
In an unusual step, Powell attended the oral arguments about Fed Governor Lisa Cook's case at the Supreme Court this month, calling the case "the most important legal case in the Fed's 113-year history."
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments regarding the administration's controversial effort to remove Cook from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
Trump fired Cook in August last year, accusing her of making false statements on a mortgage application and aiming to replace her with his own hand-picked governor on the Fed's governing board. Cook has denied any wrongdoing.
Responding to a question about the Fed's independence at the press conference after the Federal Open Market Committee meeting on Wednesday, Powell offered a strong defense, saying it is a cornerstone of modern democracies and a safeguard against the politicization of monetary policy.
"The reason is that monetary policy can be used, you know, through an election cycle to affect the economy in a way that will be politically worthwhile," Powell said. "If you lose that, it's going to be hard to retain it." ■