President Trump has tapped Michelle W. Bowman, a Federal Reserve governor, to be the next vice chair for supervision at the central bank, according to a White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly.
The position was vacated at the end of last month by another Fed governor, Michael S. Barr, who stepped down from the role to avert a protracted legal fight in the event that the president followed through on threats to fire him.
Ms. Bowman, whom Mr. Trump appointed to the Fed’s seven-seat Board of Governors during his first term, was long seen as the top contender for the position. Because Mr. Barr stayed on as a governor — his term expires in 2032 — Mr. Trump’s selection for vice chair was limited to the policymakers currently on the board.
If confirmed by the Senate Banking Committee, Ms. Bowman is likely to usher in a more hands-off approach to financial regulation than that of her predecessor, who was appointed during the Biden administration.
In recent years, Ms. Bowman, a former state bank commissioner of Kansas, has positioned herself as a prominent voice at the central bank calling for less onerous oversight of Wall Street.
She voted against Mr. Barr’s proposal to raise capital requirements on lenders such as JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs — a plan that the biggest banks and industry lobbyists ferociously opposed. She has also aligned with their calls to make the stress tests that the Fed imposes on lenders to evaluate their ability to withstand crises much more transparent. The central bank is working on meeting those demands after U.S. banking lobbying groups sued it.
Ms. Bowman, who worked in community banking and as an adviser in the Department of Homeland Security during the George W. Bush administration, has also become more vocal on monetary policy matters.
In September, she was the sole dissenter when the central bank decided on a larger-than-usual half-point interest rate cut; she feared that such a big move would look like a “premature declaration of victory” on inflation. It was the first time since 2005 that a governor had voted against a rate decision.
Since then, Ms. Bowman has stuck to her stance that the Fed should be cautious about additional interest rate cuts until it is more certain that inflation is heading back to its 2 percent goal. In remarks last month, she warned that there were “greater risks to price stability, especially while the labor market remains strong,” suggesting that she will not support a rate cut anytime soon.
Unless a governor steps down, Mr. Trump will not have the opportunity to shape the top ranks of the Fed until early next year, when Adriana D. Kugler’s term expires. In May next year, Jerome H. Powell’s term as chair will also end, but he can remain a governor into 2028.
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