Kevin Warsh, President Trump's pick to head the U.S. Federal Reserve starting in May, speaking at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Spring meetings at the IMF headquarters in Washington, D.C., on April 25, 2025.
President Donald Trump said his choice to lead the Federal Reserve can stoke the economy to grow at a rate of 15 percent, an exceedingly rosy target that nonetheless underscores the pressure Kevin Warsh will face if confirmed to the role. Speaking in an interview with Fox Business, Trump said Warsh was the "runner up" in his last search and that it was a big mistake to pick Fed chair Jerome Powell instead.
If Warsh "does the job that he's capable" of, then "we can grow at 15 percent, I think, more than that," Trump told host Larry Kudlow, who was a senior aide in the president's first administration, in a clip aired yesterday. "I think he is going to be great, and he's a really high-quality person."
It was not fully clear if Trump was referring to year-over-year growth or some other metric. The U.S. economy, which is seen expanding 2.4 percent this year, has grown at an average annual rate of 2.8 percent over the past five decades. Gross domestic product (GDP) has risen at a 15 percent–plus pace only a few times since the 1950s, including in the third quarter of 2020 as businesses reopened following pandemic-related closures.
Trump said during the search for a Fed new chair that he wanted a candidate who would lower interest rates, and later said he would not have picked Warsh if he'd advocated for increasing rates. The comments make clear that Trump is betting that Warsh, if confirmed, can fuel the economy ahead of midterm elections, which are historically punishing for U.S. presidents.
But Warsh's Senate confirmation may be delayed, with Senator Thom Tillis, a retiring Republican from North Carolina, pledging to block any Fed confirmation as long as Trump's administration is pursuing a Justice Department probe into Powell and a Fed building renovation project.
Kudlow questioned Trump about whether the Department of Justice investigation was worth holding up Warsh's nomination. "I don't know; we'll have to see what happens," Trump said. "I've been fighting Tillis for a long time, so much so that he ended up quitting." Seeming unconcerned about a potential delay, Trump added: "If it happens, it happens."
Trump's comments in the Fox Business interview signal what could prove to be a high-wire act for Warsh. His remarks suggest Trump is not concerned about inflation, which would typically soar under growth rates anywhere near 15 percent and which has remained stubbornly elevated.
Fed officials have penciled in just one interest-rate cut for 2026, according to the median estimate in projections released in December, though investors still expect two reductions this year.
In a clip aired Monday, Trump said it was former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin who pushed him to pick Powell. "My secretary of the Treasury wanted him so badly, so badly," Trump said of Powell. "And I didn't feel good about him, but sometimes you listen to people, and it was a mistake, it was really a big mistake."
Powell was reappointed under Joe Biden but has since become a target of Trump, who has heavily pushed for lower rates and broken from decades of precedent to raise questions about the independence of the Fed.
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