Federal Reserve Chairman-nominee Kevin Wersh is sworn in at his Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee confirmation hearing at the Dirksen Building on Tuesday, April 21, 2026.
Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | getty images
It took eight and a half years, but on Wednesday President Donald Trump finally succeeded in changing one of the few mistakes he acknowledged as president. In November 2017, Trump chose Jerome Powell to chair the Federal Reserve, replacing Kevin Wersh, a charismatic but young former Fed governor, with someone he considered flexible. Since then Trump has regretted this.
As the Senate moved toward Wednesday’s confirmation, the market raised questions about whether Trump would also regret the decision. Trump said in January that Fed chairmen “change as soon as they get the job.” If Welch loses Trump’s endorsement, the new Fed chair would be left without the support of Congress, which helped Powell oppose Trump.
Whether Wersch can succeed in the “regime change” mission he has pledged to the Fed will depend on his ability to navigate this exceptionally challenging political landscape. But while he is starting his term at a significant political disadvantage compared to Powell, Wersch’s history and his relationship with Trump suggest the new chair is more likely to forge an independent path than his opponents. And he can do so in a cooperative way that will surprise those who are prepared for immediate friction.
Warsh, 56, received only 54 votes Wednesday, with Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania the only Democratic “yes” vote. This is the weakest support a Fed chairman has received since he was confirmed to the post by the Senate in 1977. The previous record low was held by Democrat-nominated Janet Yellen, who received 56 votes in 2014, including 11 votes from Republicans.
This time, among those voting against Warsh was Minority Leader Senator Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. were also included. This is a contrast from 2006, when Schumer endorsed Warsh for the Fed governorship because Warsh “clearly knows that the Fed must be independent, non-ideological, and non-partisan.” Warsh was confirmed unanimously that year.
Powell found an important ally in the Senate in the face of Trump’s attacks. Senator Thom Tillis, R-N.C. Threatened to delay Warsh’s confirmation until the Justice Department closed its criminal investigation into the feds. Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, did so in April, clearing the way for Warsh.
“Powell met with US senators more than twice as often as his predecessors.” University of Maryland researchers Who studied the calendars of Fed chairmen in a study published in April.
Many longtime Fed watchers have already branded Warsh a lost cause, either because they think he is deluded into thinking he can influence the Fed’s rigid bureaucracy or because he is merely a “sock puppet” for Trump, as Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Warsh’s most prominent progressive critic, calls him.
But Warsh is not the kind of spectator who has lucked out in the economy’s most influential role. Trump publicly struggled with whether to give him the job. He Fed position offered Scott Besant, now the Treasury Secretary, before winning the 2024 election.
Last year, Warsh advised Trump not to remove PowellA decision that would personally benefit Warsh at the expense of the Fed’s credibility. He won Trump’s nomination in January amid a whisper campaign that his record of concerns about inflation and concerns about tariffs made him a poor match for this president.
Certainly, no one has a liberal view of Warsh. He has been publicly conservative since successfully running for president of the Stanford University Student Senate. He began working as a research assistant for his intellectual idol, the staunchly conservative economist Milton Friedman. But more than his ideology, it is Warsh’s ability to connect his beliefs to the ideas and ambitions of others that makes him politically powerful, said Stanford economist John Kogan, who taught Warsh as an undergraduate and now counts him as a friend.
Kogan said, “I know him to be a person who is able to understand other viewpoints and who is willing to find common ground.”
Warsh will immediately need to put his skills as a political operator to work inside and outside the Fed’s walls.
Inside the Fed, Warsh will need to bring together a committee of interest rate voters who are concerned about the risk of a resurgence of inflation. The consumer price index rose 3.8% in April, federal-government data released this week showed, driven by the energy shock of the Iran war. Even factoring out volatile energy prices, so-called core inflation has now risen for three consecutive months, leading some Fed members to worry that they have not set interest rates high enough to stem price rises regardless of what happens in the Middle East.
Cutting interest rates could be a tough task
The Fed will have no inclination to carry out the rapid rate cuts that Trump has demanded. The President recently said that he would be Disappointed if Warsh can’t deliver it.
Wersh told senators during his confirmation hearing that he never promised Trump he could do this. And he has based his mission as Fed chair around the idea that the central bank has become overly obsessed with the nuances of short-term economic data at the expense of resetting its credibility with markets.
In Warsh’s view, evidence of that lost credibility is seen in inflation expectations: Nor market participants and neither Consumers surveyed by the Fed Inflation is expected to return to the Fed’s 2% target within five years.
Warsh will try to reset those expectations by getting the Fed out of the business of committing to where interest rates will go as forward guidance, improving communications so the institution can speak more with one voice, updating the data sources the Fed relies on, and striking a new deal with the Treasury Department on how the two share responsibility for managing the economy.
Can Wersch do it all and deliver the rate cuts Trump expects? The market doesn’t think so, giving it a 1% chance of rates falling this year. According to CME Fedwatch.
There’s a distinct possibility that Trump will explode if Warsh fails to make the cut in June. But that thought becomes inactive due to rain. The other option is that the Fed chair, who has spent nearly a decade preparing for this moment, will continue to convince the president that he can deliver the golden age that Trump so desperately wants. This would hardly be the first time Trump has suddenly pivoted toward a politically convenient idea, even when the idea comes from someone he trusts.
Warsh’s divided support may say more about how the country has changed than his politics. His point has been that he understands better than anyone how to ensure the Fed’s enduring influence as a stabilizing force for Americans’ livelihoods despite widespread political fallout.
Now he has a chance to prove himself. If he fails, a bastion of American economic power will be destroyed along with it.