Donald Trump’s campaign team is examining steps to sideline Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, should the former president return to the White House.
Speaking with Barron’s, Trump economic advisor Scott Bessent suggested Congress approve a Fed chair designate more than a year before the central bank governor’s term expires in May 2026. This would effectively install a babysitter alongside the current Fed chair, and it could render Powell a lame duck for the remainder of his time in office.
Bessent, founder of the hedge fund Key Square Group, is reportedly on the short list for Treasury secretary in a second Trump administration, according to a recent report by the Wall Street Journal.
“You could do the earliest Fed nomination and create a shadow Fed chair,” Bessent told Barron’s. “And based on the concept of forward guidance, no one is really going to care what Jerome Powell has to say anymore.”
Plan well received by Trump campaign
During Trump’s latter half in office, his relationship with the Fed chair, whom the president himself had appointed, became increasingly acrimonious. Powell repeatedly ignored White House pressure to help the president’s reelection chances by juicing the economy through lower interest rates.
Taking to Twitter to launch a tirade against Powell became a regular occurrence. Once Trump even asked whether the Fed chair was a bigger enemy to the American people than China’s Xi Jinping.
Bessent said he has circulated the plan to sideline Powell among fellow Trump campaign advisors, where it was well received. Nonetheless, this is not official policy, at least not yet.
“This is my idea,” the hedge fund manager added, “not the president’s.”
‘Terrible’ idea—just look at Erdogan’s Turkey
Citing his purported business acumen, Trump has openly expressed a desire to erode the U.S. central bank’s prized independence. This has sparked comparisons to Richard Nixon, whose Fed chair was widely considered the worst in the institution’s recent history.
Ed Yardeni, a Wall Street veteran and president of Yardeni Research, told the publication it was a “terrible” idea. A shadow Fed chair would “create a lot of noise in the market,” leaving investors guessing as to whose words weighed more heavily within the FOMC, the Fed’s main policy-setting committee. “Everybody would be looking at the calendar to see when Powell is out,” Yardeni told Barron’s.
The independence of the Fed from the political vagaries on Pennsylvania Avenue and Capitol Hill is considered sacrosanct—a crucial prerequisite for a responsible monetary policy that places price stability at its core.
One only has to look to a country like Turkey to see what happens when the head of state wields the power of his office to keep monetary policy rates artificially low.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sacked one central bank governor after the other whenever they failed to do as they were told.
The result has been double-digit inflation and a flight out of the Turkish lira into anything that serves as a better store of value, whether that is U.S. dollars, gold, or cryptocurrency.
Fed’s credibility suffered
In the past Trump’s notion of eroding the independence of the U.S. central bank would have met with strong pushback from all directions.
Yet the Fed’s credibility was damaged after it mistakenly and repeatedly judged soaring post-pandemic consumer prices to be “transitory.” Fed officials then launched a series of draconian rate hikes in 2022 in an effort to correct their mistake and stuff the inflation genie back into the bottle.
Lately Powell has been earning plaudits, however, for gradually bringing down the rate of growth in consumer prices from multi-decade highs that had peaked above 9% two years ago.
In recent months it’s dropped back down toward the Fed’s 2% target, even as a buoyant U.S. economy continued to expand at a breezy clip amid an ongoing robust jobs market.
The Fed did not return a request from Fortune for comment, while the Republican National Committee, responsible for running Trump’s campaign, did not respond to phone calls.
