A central question emerging from Washington and Wall Street alike is whether Donald Trump could engineer rapid interest-rate cuts simply by replacing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell in 2026. But as Nick Timiraos of The Wall Street Journal argues, the problem isn’t the chair — it’s the votes.
Timiraos notes that the Federal Open Market Committee is unusually split over the prospect of a December rate cut, and that the move is unlikely unless Powell himself insists on it. That divide, he writes, shows why a future Fed chair installed by Trump might also struggle to deliver cuts without majority backing.
The Fed chair may set the agenda, but the analogy is closer to a quarterback calling a play: the rest of the team still needs to execute. The institution’s history shows that chairs don’t always control outcomes — even when presidents assume they do.
Timiraos highlights the Carter-era turbulence that illustrates the point. In 1978, just months after Jimmy Carter appointed G. William Miller as Fed chair, Miller found himself in the minority as the committee voted to raise interest rates against his preference.
By March 1979, the FOMC delivered another rare split decision: Miller, facing both inflation fears and recession anxieties, won a narrow 6–4 vote against raising rates — despite public pressure from Carter’s Treasury secretary, who attempted to whip votes in favour of a hike. Among the dissenters was New York Fed President Paul Volcker, who supported higher rates and would become Fed chair later that year.
The archival record captures the internal tensions plainly: a committee “deeply divided over whether recession or inflation was the greater danger,” and an administration trying — unsuccessfully — to influence the vote count.
Timiraos’s point is that any incoming Fed chair who attempts to rapidly cut rates could run into the same institutional reality: the chair influences policy, but cannot unilaterally deliver it.
This article was written by Eamonn Sheridan at investinglive.com.