President Donald Trump led a ceremony swearing in Kevin Warsh as chair of the Federal Reserve, putting him in charge of a central bank that must navigate a tumultuous economy and a president with very specific expectations on interest rates.
Trump, whose actions toward the Fed have spurred bipartisan alarms about executive influence on the historically independent central bank, said he wanted Warsh to “just do your own thing and do a great job.”
“I want Kevin to be totally independent,” Trump said at the start of the event Friday morning. “Don’t look at me, don’t look at anybody.”
But the swearing-in ceremony itself highlighted the the president’s unprecedented involvement with the Fed during his second term: Warsh is the first Fed chair to be sworn in at the White House since Alan Greenspan in 1987.
Trump made his desires for the Warsh era even clearer later Friday, when he claimed interest rates will be coming down “very quickly.”
“You watch what’s going to happen. I had a rotten head of the Fed, and now I have a great head of the Fed,” Trump said at a campaign-style rally in Suffern, N.Y. “Kevin was just sworn in today, he’s great, he’s going to be great.”
Trump began to talk about a housing bill in Congress, then digressed. “To be honest with you, housing’s all about interest rates … they can pass all the bills they want, it’s about interest rates. You get the interest rates down, everybody’s going to be very, very happy,” he told the audience at a local community college.
The Warsh ceremony in the East Room was attended by a range of high-profile figures, including Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh, House Speaker Mike Johnson and many other politicians and Cabinet officials.
Thomas delivered the oath to Warsh.
“Our mandate at the Fed is to promote price stability and maximum employment,” Warsh said after being sworn in.
“When we pursue those aims with wisdom and clarity, independence and resolve, inflation can be lower, growth stronger, real take home pay higher, and America can be more prosperous, and no less important, America’s place in the world more secure,” he said.
“To fulfill this mission, I will lead a reform-oriented Federal Reserve, learning from past successes and mistakes, both escaping static frameworks and models, and upholding clear standards of integrity and performance,” he said.
Warsh, 56, is the 11th Fed chair of the modern banking era, succeeding Jerome Powell, who served eight years.
Powell, a major target of Trump’s ire over his refusal to lower rates as quickly or steeply as the president desired, will continue to serve at the Fed as a governor. He is the first Fed chair to make such a move in nearly 80 years.
Friday’s swearing-in marks Warsh’s second stint at the Fed. He previously served as governor from 2006 to 2011, a time in which the central bank joined forces with Treasury officials to rescue the economy from the global financial crisis.
Though Warsh helped the Fed effort, he later grew critical of the central bank for allowing crisis-era policies to remain in place and to overreach its mandate for stable prices and low unemployment. For instance, he has cited prior efforts to address climate change and social inequality as areas of mission creep, and has vowed to trim down the central bank’s imprint on markets.
Warsh gained the seat following a wide-ranging competition that began in the summer of 2025 and included as many as 11 candidates, ranging from current and former Fed officials to prominent economists and Wall Street strategists.
Powell’s term was marked by repeated and often personal criticism from Trump. The president demanded more aggressive action from the Fed when it came to cutting rates and accused Powell of having “Trump derangement syndrome,” even though the Fed lowered its benchmark borrowing rate by three-quarters of a percentage point and raised by 4.25 points during one stretch of the Joe Biden presidency.
Despite Trump’s demands for lower rates, markets are betting the Fed will stay on hold through most, if not all, of 2026, and then possibly hiking rates in early 2027.
The Powell run also was characterized by inflation running above the Fed’s 2% goal for five years running. Warsh has vowed he can both control inflation while lowering benchmark rates.
Since leaving the Fed, Warsh has spent time at Stanley Druckenmiller’s Duquesne Family Office, and as a lecturer at Stanford University and the Hoover Institution. Warsh was thought to be a leading candidate for Fed chair when Trump made clear he was not going to renominate Janet Yellen, but the president ultimately chose Powell, reportedly at the urging of former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.