Trump Indicates He May Be Narrowing Down Fed Chair Pick to 1 Candidate

BlackRock’s chief bond investment manager, Rick Rieder, is one of the leading candidates.

President Donald Trump and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell tour the Federal Reserve’s $2.5 billion headquarters renovation project in Washington on July 24, 2025. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

President Donald Trump on Jan. 21 suggested he is narrowing down his pick for the next chair of the Federal Reserve, and he indicated that he prefers keeping White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett in his current position.

Speaking with CNBC’s Joe Kernen in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 21, Trump discussed the three candidates for Fed chair that he and his top aides have named publicly: BlackRock’s chief bond investment manager, Rick Rieder; Federal Reserve board member Christopher Waller; and former Federal Reserve board member Kevin ‍Warsh.

“I like actually keeping [Hassett] where he is, you want to know the truth. I don’t want to lose him. He’s so good on television,” Trump told CNBC. “I’d say we’re down to three [candidates], but we’re down to two. And I probably can tell you we’re down to maybe one in my mind.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated on Jan. 20 that Trump’s field of candidates had been narrowed down to four.

The president told CNBC that Rieder was “very impressive” in his interview for the position.

“Rick is very good. They’re all good. You know, all three are good,” he said.

The president returned to his criticisms of current Fed Chair Jerome Powell for not lowering interest rates quickly enough and for his leadership at the central bank.

“He’s too late. He’s always too late, except when it comes to politics for the other side, where he was actually too early,” Trump said.

Bessent, who had been named as a potential Fed chair contender in 2025, wants to stay in his position leading the Treasury Department, the president said.

“He’s fantastic. But Scott only wants to stay where he is,” Trump said.

The president indicated that he was looking for another Fed chair like Alan Greenspan, who led the central bank from 1987 to 2006.

“In the old days, when you had a good run, you would announce good numbers, and the stock market would go up. And now the stock market crashes every time you have good numbers, because I think everyone’s going to raise rates,” Trump said.

He also said that he doesn’t believe economic growth is a “big cause of inflation.”

Last week, Greenspan and two other former Fed chairs signed a joint statement criticizing the Department of Justice’s recent criminal probe into Powell, which they called “an unprecedented attempt to use prosecutorial attacks to undermine” the central bank’s independence.

“This is how monetary policy is made ⁠in emerging markets with weak institutions, with ‍highly negative consequences for inflation and the functioning of their economies ‌more ‌broadly,” the statement read. “It has no place in the United States, whose greatest strength is the rule of law, which is at the foundation of our ⁠economic success.”

The statement was jointly signed by 10 other former leading economic policymakers who have been appointed by both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations.

The Justice Department probe alleges that Powell mismanaged the renovation project for the Fed’s headquarters, which has been under scrutiny because of budget overrun.

When the renovation was first approved nearly a decade ago, it carried an estimated cost of $1.9 billion, but that figure has since climbed to about $2.5 billion. Fed officials have cited higher labor and material costs, longer construction timelines, and additional issues such as asbestos and soil contamination.

Trump has called the rising cost of the Fed renovation “really disgraceful,” and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought called the overhaul “ostentatious” and suggested that Powell may have broken the law by not complying with federal oversight rules.

Powell said that the criminal probe is not about his management of the renovation project or his June 2025 testimony to Congress about the project’s scope.

“It is not about Congress’s oversight role; the Fed through testimony and other public disclosures made every effort to keep Congress informed about the renovation project. Those are pretexts,” Powell said in a statement earlier this month.

“The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President.”

Trump previously said that the Fed’s keeping rates high led to higher debt servicing costs for the United States and that the inflationary effects of his global tariffs didn’t materialize as Powell expected.

Trump first nominated Powell to be Fed chair in 2017, and President Joe Biden reappointed him in 2022.

Powell’s four-year term as chair ends in May, but his term on the Fed’s board lasts until January 2028.

Trump told CNBC on Jan. 21 that he thinks Powell “wants to get out” of the central bank.

“We’ll find out,“ Trump said. ”So if he stays, he stays. If he doesn’t stay, he doesn’t stay.”