Donald Trump nominates Kevin Warsh as chair of Federal Reserve

Donald Trump has announced Kevin Warsh as his nomination for the next chair of the Federal Reserve.Writing on his Truth Social platform, the president said: “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.”The move ends months of speculation about who Trump would pick to replace Jerome Powell as head of the US central bank, amid an extraordinary attempt by the president to influence policymaking by repeatedly calling for rate cuts.Warsh, 55, a former Federal Reserve governor who has deep ties to Wall Street, had previously interviewed for the job of chair in 2017 when the role went to Powell, whose term ends in May.Warsh has given past warnings of inflation risks in the US, although has more recently echoed the president’s criticism of the Fed for being too slow to cut interest rates.Stephen Brown, a US economist at Capital Economics, said markets were likely to consider Warsh “a relatively safe choice”.A video of Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, plays on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on 12 January. Photograph: Richard Drew/APWarsh, a New Yorker who was special assistant for economic policy from 2002 to 2006, served as Fed governor between 2006 and 2011, a period that included the response to the global financial crisis, and was its representative to the G20 group of countries.He is now a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and has roles at the courier UPS, the Korean e-commerce company Coupang and the Duquesne Family Office, the investment firm of the billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller.Warsh is married to Jane Lauder, the granddaughter of the cosmetics magnate Estée Lauder and daughter of Ronald Lauder, the billionaire businessman who has interests in Greenland and encouraged Trump to attempt to acquire the territory.Other candidates on the shortlist to be Federal Reserve chair had been Kevin Hassett, the National Economic Council director; Christopher Waller, a Fed governor, and Rick Rieder, an executive at BlackRock.