The door is open for Trump to create more chaos

Within the next few days, US President Donald Trump will make two appointments that could have a significant impact on America’s interest rates and economy.

A Federal Reserve Board governor, Adriana Kugler, unexpectedly announced her resignation last week, effective from Friday this week, six months before her term was scheduled to expire.

That resignation creates an opening for Trump to parachute a loyalist into the midst of an organisation of which he has been fiercely critical.

Also, Trump has said he would appoint a new head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics within days, after firing its former head last week because the agency had produced jobs numbers that he didn’t like.

The two appointments to critical economic agencies have the potential to undermine the credibility of the Feds’s policy decisions and the Bureau of Labor Statistics data if financial market participants and businesses suspect that the Fed’s decisions and the bureau’s data have been tainted by political influences.

Trump has made no secret of his desire to direct the Fed. He wants it to slash its policy rate, the federal funds rate, by three percentage points to lower government borrowing costs and boost economic activity. The federal funds rates target is currently between 4.25 per cent and 4.5 per cent.

Equally, having accused the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, of “rigging” the jobs data after the agency announced significant revisions of earlier (more positive) employment numbers, he wants, as his senior economic adviser, Kevin Hassett said at the weekend, “his own people” at the top of the agency.

Hassett, the National Economic Council Director in the Trump administration, is one of the prospective nominees to fill the vacant position on the Fed’s board.

Trump has said he is considering four contenders for the position of the Fed’s chair, which will open up in May next year when the term of the current chair, Jerome Powell, whom Trump detests and attacks relentlessly and viciously, will end. Hassett, current governor Christopher Waller and former governor Kevin Warsh are thought to be on his short list.

He is weighing up whether to announce a short-term appointment to replace Kugler – someone who would fill the position until the term expires on January 31 – or appointing a “chair elect” who would succeed Powell when his term as chair ends next May.

It’s a pivotal decision because the Kugler position might be the only opportunity he has to inject a loyalist into the Fed boardroom during this term. Powell’s chairmanship might end in May but, should he choose to remain on the board, his term as a governor runs until 2028. There are no other scheduled retirements during the Trump presidency.

There are reports that Trump’s advisers (which include unusual names, like Fox’s Sean Hannity and MAGA heavyweight Steve Bannon) are urging him to appoint someone who will occupy the seat only until January, giving him more time to decide on Powell’s replacement.

Trump could appoint someone designated as Powell’s successor, hoping that a “shadow” chair would undermine Powell and Powell’s messaging both within and outside the Fed’s boardroom. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (who has withdrawn himself from contention for the role) mooted exactly that strategy ahead of last year’s US election.

Whether the appointment is short term or unveils Powell’s successor, however, the new governor would be one of only two Trump-appointed members on the seven-member board and the 12-member Federal Open Market Committee that actually decides US monetary policies. The other is the Fed’s deputy chair, Michelle Bowman.

While Trump has made it very clear what he wants from the next Fed chair, it is less obvious what qualifications, other than loyalty, Trump wants from the incoming Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner.

The blueprint for this administration – “Project 2025” – recommended appointing political appointees to the Labor Department, within which the bureau sits, and consolidating the bureau with other data-collecting agencies into a “more manageable” mega statistical agency.

The bureau could do with a (non-political) overhaul. It has a challenge with its current data surveys because, post-pandemic, the response rates from businesses have dropped significantly. That’s part of the explanation for why its revisions of June quarter data, which showed a major fall in jobs generation, were so large.

Even as it has become harder for the bureau to collect accurate data, it has experienced a reduction in its resources in recent years that is being compounded by job losses and an 8 per cent cut to next year’s budget because of Trump’s assault on the US bureaucracy.

If its data is to be made more reliable and credible, it needs more, not fewer, resources and someone – like Kugler – who is non-partisan and clearly qualified as its head.

If Trump appoints a loyalist, it would cast a shadow over the accuracy of data central to the markets and businesses’ understanding of economic conditions and probably lead to an increase in risk premia in US interest rates.

The ironic aspect of Trump’s response to the weak employment data is that it actually strengthens the case for a rate cut.

The Fed has a dual mandate, charged with maximising employment and price stability. It has kept rates on hold while it waits to see the effects of Trump’s trade policies on an inflation rate that, at 2.7 per cent, is already above its target of 2 per cent.

The two appointments to critical economic agencies have the potential to undermine the credibility of the Fed’s policy decisions and the Bureau of Labor Statistics data if financial market participants and businesses suspect that the Fed’s decisions and the bureau’s data have been tainted by political influences.

The inflation rate has been edging up even before the full effects of Trump’s tariffs have had time to reveal themselves, but the economy has slowed markedly and the Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows the unemployment rate is edging up even as the job market shrinks and salaries stagnate.

Where, before that data, the odds were against a rate cut at the Fed’s meeting next month, they – and an increasing number of Fed governors – now favour a rate cut.

Instead of accusing (without any evidence) the bureau of manipulating its data to make his economic management look bad, Trump should have seized on it to proclaim that he was right, and the Fed wrong, on the need for a rate cut.

Trump can probably cause conflicts and dysfunction within the Fed and the bureau if that is his objective with the appointments he makes.

Whether that achieves his broader ambitions, however, is another matter.

Even if he could stack the Fed board with loyalists, which he can’t, or intimidate the majority of the Open Market Committee, which is unlikely, the Fed can only influence US short-term rates. The federal funds rate anchors the bond market’s yield curve, but longer-term rates are set by the market itself.

If investors thought the Fed’s decision-making had been politicised, they would demand higher yields to compensate for the increased risk of inflation and increase the premium required for holding longer-term bonds.

The yield curve would steepen, and it is those yields at the longer end of the curve that determine the rates on mortgage and car loans and business’ interest costs.

It is the Fed’s credibility as an independent, apolitical agency that will contain inflation that gives it a broader influence over the curve than just the federal funds rate.

Similarly, if the Bureau of Labor Statistics data is regarded as tainted and unreliable, it will inject uncertainty and caution into businesses’ decision-making and probably lead to less employment and investment.

Trump thinks capturing the Fed and the Bureau of Labor Statistics will, with his tariffs, help propel the US economy into a “Golden Age.” It would be more likely to do otherwise avoidable economic damage to an economy already threatened by the prices increases and uncertainties created by his equally ill-conceived tariffs.

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