GOP senators are starting to embrace a Fed chair replacement who has unnerved some investors

WASHINGTON — Some investors are worried that White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett can't be trusted to keep the Federal Reserve separate from the executive branch if he gets the official nod from President Donald Trump to helm the central bank. Don't count Republican senators among those concerned.

"Do I think he is capable? Yes," Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, a senior member of the Senate Banking panel, told Quartz. He believes Hassett is "very bright." Still, he emphasized that he intended to have an "open line of communication" with him in the event that the president settles on him as the nominee.

Sometime early next year, Trump will make one of the most consequential policy decisions of his second term: picking a replacement for current Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whose term is up in May 2026. Only a handful of candidates remain in the administration's selection process, with Trump saying in an interview published Tuesday that cutting interest rates right away is a litmus test for him.

But Hassett is widely viewed as the frontrunner to replace Powell, and GOP senators are increasingly warming up to him. Despite that, the Financial Times reported last week that bond investors warned the Treasury Department against Hassett's nomination. In any case, Senate Republicans can only spare three votes for his nomination if it materializes, with Democrats expected to line up in opposition.

"He's been a good economist. He's been somebody that's been very engaged and thinks well, thinks deeply about the issue," GOP Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma told Quartz. Asked if he was concerned about the Fed becoming less independent, Lankford pointed to the Fed's Board of Governors as a brake on a rate-cutting campaign since every Fed chair must develop a consensus first. "There's still other folks there," he said.

Another prominent GOP senator was betting the Supreme Court will intervene to ensure the Fed remains at arm's reach from the executive branch. "It's always dangerous to predict that court, but if I had to predict, I'd predict that court will say, come this spring, that the Fed is in a unique category and no president can unilaterally remove board members," Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri told Quartz.

Close observers of the Fed, though, are keeping a wary eye on Hassett, who hasn't been timid in demanding Trump-style policy changes at the Fed. Drastically lower interest rates are chief among them. On Tuesday, he said that he would rely on his own judgment in helping set interest rates but added there was "plenty of room" to cut them in the coming months.

The Fed is widely expected to cut rates by 25 basis points this week to reach a benchmark rate between 3.50% and 3.75%. Trump, though, has previously demanded a 2% interest rate.

"He could say he's being independent. But if he independently comes to the same conclusions that President Trump and Scott Bessent had come to, then what does it mean to be independent?" David Wessel, a central bank expert and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, recently told Quartz.

Before Hassett joined the first and second Trump administrations as an economic adviser, he spent decades as a policy analyst at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. But he has made policy claims that garnered scrutiny while serving Trump in the White House. It includes a famous "cubic model" at the start of the pandemic that showed COVID-related deaths plunging to zero by May 2020.

"For the last several years, he's been singing from the Trump songbook, and surprising many economists who had previously respected him," Wessel said. "I am surprised that the financial markets seem so calm about the Hassett appointment."