Trump plans to announce his Fed chief nominee on Friday

By Steve Holland and Bo Erickson

WASHINGTON, Jan 29 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Thursday he intends to announce his pick to replace Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday, as speculation intensifies over who will lead the U.S. central bank after Powell steps ​aside from the job in May.

"I'll be announcing the Fed chair tomorrow morning," Trump said at the Kennedy Center on Thursday.

Earlier in the ‌day, at his first cabinet meeting of 2026, Trump said he would announce his choice to succeed Powell next week, while reiterating his call for the Fed to cut interest rates deeply.

Powell's term ‌as Fed leader ends in May but recent pressure by the Trump administration - including a Department of Justice probe of cost overruns for renovations at the Fed's headquarters in Washington - has given rise to the possibility that Powell might remain at the Fed until his separate term as a Board of Governors member expires in 2028.

The Fed, which cut rates three times in 2025, left its benchmark interest rate unchanged in the 3.50%-3.75% range after the end of a two-day policy meeting on Wednesday. ⁠Trump says the rate should be two to three ‌percentage points lower, a level historically consistent with a stalled or faltering economy.

The economy grew at a 4.4% annualized rate in the third quarter, according to Commerce Department data.

Over the course of the Trump administration's months-long formal search for Powell's successor, ‍the president has been seen to favor different candidates, even as he has ramped up his campaign to exert influence over the Fed, whose independence from political pressure is seen as key to its ability to control inflation.

In recent months Trump has tried to fire a Fed governor in a case now before the Supreme Court, and his Justice Department has ​opened a criminal investigation into Powell for statements he made about building renovations - a move the Fed chief has called out as a "pretext" to pressure ‌him over monetary policy.

FOUR CANDIDATES ON TRUMP'S SHORT LIST

Now down to a four-person short list, the candidates to take the reins from Powell all agree with Trump that rates should be lower - indeed, that was one of the president's explicit criteria for his pick.

Rick Rieder, chief investment officer of BlackRock's global fixed income business, recently became the odds-on favorite to be Trump's nominee. Rieder, who has never worked in government or at the Fed, would bring a fresh face to an institution that the president accuses of entrenched political bias.