Warsh’s challenge: Navigating Fed independence and Trump’s demands

WASHINGTON (AP) — Kevin Warsh has sought the job of Federal Reserve chair, off and on, since President Donald Trump first considered him for the position nearly a decade ago. Now that he is in line for the position, the enormity of the challenge ahead of him is clear.

To be effective, Warsh must gain the trust of at least three constituencies: the committee of Federal Reserve officials whose votes he will have to win to change interest rates; the financial markets, which can undermine his efforts to reduce borrowing costs if they think he is acting politically, and not least Trump, a former real estate developer with an exquisite sense of just how much difference a cut or increase in interest rates can make for those with large debts, whether they are businesses, households or a government.

“He has to thread that needle,” said Raghuram Rajan, an economist at the University of Chicago and former head of India’s central bank. “If you are seen as too pliable to the administration, you lose the support of the members of the (Fed), you become ineffective in creating consensus.”

Yet if he alienates the White House, Rajan said, Warsh runs the risk of putting the Fed back in the White House’s sights. Under Trump, the current chair Jerome Powell has come under relentless fire for not cutting interest rates as quickly as the president would like, and is now under criminal investigation by the Department of Justice.

Warsh may also face a bumpy confirmation process in the Senate, where two Republicans have already said they will oppose his nomination unless the criminal investigation is resolved.

And there may be even more drama ahead: Powell, as part of the Fed’s complex structure, could remain on the Fed’s governing board, as well as its rate-setting committee, even after his term as chair ends in May. That would leave Warsh facing a situation no Fed chair has dealt with in 80 years: A former chair potentially acting as a counterweight to the new leader of the Fed.

Christopher Rugaber, The Associated Press