President-elect Donald Trump could be considering a former member of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve to be his Treasury secretary, and then eventually, Fed chair once Jerome Powell’s term ends. It so happens to be Kevin Warsh, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited people familiar with the matter.
Warsh and Trump reportedly discussed the two-step process on Wednesday in Mar-a-Lago; it is the center of the political universe, after all. Warsh may be a front-runner for Treasury secretary, per the Journal, but Trump is still undecided. Plus, Trump apparently is still debating how he’ll handle the Fed vacancy; he might even wait until it gets closer to the day Powell is set to leave.
“President-Elect Trump is making decisions on who will serve in his second Administration. Those decisions will continue to be announced by him when they are made,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump-Vance transition team, said in a statement.
Warsh did not immediately respond to Fortune’s attempt to reach him.
Earlier, Trump seemed to be choosing between Howard Lutnick, the chairman and chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, who had the backing of the world’s richest man Elon Musk, and Scott Bessent. That was before Lutnick was nominated for secretary of commerce. As for Bessent, the founder and chief executive of Key Square Group, he’s being floated to lead the National Economic Council, before eventually being nominated as Treasury secretary, if Warsh actually becomes Fed chair, some of the people told the Journal. Sort of confusing, right?
Let’s not forget Marc Rowan, chief executive of Apollo Global Management, is in the mix, too. Obviously, no one but Trump knows who’ll be his Treasury secretary, let alone his Fed chair. Even so, what do we know about Kevin Warsh?
Well, he was a Fed governor from 2006 to 2011; he studied public policy at Stanford University before attending Harvard Law School; he was an executive at Morgan Stanley; and he was a part of President George W. Bush’s administration. It appears Warsh is currently a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Apparently, Warsh was in the running to be Fed chair for Trump’s first term before he picked Powell, who Trump appears to no longer be a fan of, and wanted to oust at a prior point in time.
The Journal reported that Trump asked Warsh on Wednesday about his earlier stance on tariffs, citing one person familiar. Six years ago, during Trump’s first administration, Warsh wrote an op-ed in the Journal, that reads: “Mr. Trump’s mercantilist rhetoric may prove more than a negotiating tactic, auguring new tariffs and trade restrictions the world over. Economic isolationism would do great harm to our economic growth prospects.”
It doesn’t seem to have taken him out of the running; JD Vance ended up being Trump’s running mate despite things the senator said about him in a former life. Not to mention, Warsh already has a prominent supporter in the world of economics. The president of Queens’ College, Cambridge, Mohamed El-Erian, told Bloomberg TV on Friday that Warsh would bring a good understanding and knowledge of economics, policy-making experience, and private-sector experience. He’d do “a really good job,” El-Erian said.
Trump has made a lot of nominations for his Cabinet, but this is a big one. We’ll see who he picks, and until he does so, everyone is still in the running.
