Catenaa, Friday, January 30, 2026- President Donald Trump on Friday nominated former Fed governor Kevin Warsh to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve, succeeding Jerome Powell.
“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. On top of everything else, he is ‘central casting,’ and he will never let you down,” Trump said in his announcement, which he posted to Truth Social.
Warsh has experience navigating the central bank. President George W. Bush appointed him to serve as Fed governor from 2006 until 2011. He became former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke’s liaison to Wall Street during the chaos of the 2008 financial crisis.
Before serving at the Fed, Warsh was special assistant to Bush for economic policy and an executive secretary at the National Economic Council, where he advised the president and senior administration officials on the US economy.
He has also worked in M&A at Morgan Stanley. Warsh holds a degree in public policy with a focus on economics and statistics from Stanford, as well as a law degree from Harvard.
He is a known figure to Trump, who interviewed him for the Fed chair post eight years ago before selecting Powell, a pick that Trump regretted almost instantly.
This time, Warsh ultimately became the pick over Trump’s other finalists: current Fed governor Chris Waller, BlackRock Chief of Fixed Income Rick Rieder, and National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett.
Warsh has been highly critical of the Fed, writing in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last year that the Fed should “discard its forecast of stagflation” and arguing that it is overlooking that AI will be a “significant” force that will boost productivity and push down inflation.
“He thinks you have to lower interest rates,” Trump said of Warsh recently, citing the president’s key litmus test for the role.
