Trump’s aides cancel Fed chair interviews as President homes in on pick

Trump’s team informed candidates that interviews scheduled for Wednesday with Vice President JD Vance had been canceled, according to people familiar with the matter. No reason was given for the decision. A person familiar with the matter said the cancellation was because of a scheduling conflict for the vice president. The person said it wasn’t clear if the meetings would be rescheduled.

Longtime Trump economic adviser Kevin Hassett, considered the front-runner, was among those expected to meet with Vance and White House officials about the job, a person close to him said. Other finalists for the job include former Fed governor Kevin Warsh and sitting Fed governor Christopher Waller.

A Vance spokesman didn’t respond to a request for comment. “The truth is nobody knows who President Trump’s next pick for the Fed Chair will be until he makes the announcement himself. Everything until then is pure speculation," the White House said in a statement.

Trump told reporters during a cabinet meeting on Tuesday that he had narrowed down the list of candidates to one. At a later event, he singled out Hassett, who was in the room, as a “potential Fed chair." Even as Trump suggested that the process of selecting the next Fed chair was nearly completed, he said he wouldn’t reveal his choice until early next year.

In announcing that he had already made his choice, Trump undercut a tightly choreographed interview process that his senior advisers had put in place. In recent months, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent whittled an initial field of 11 candidates down to five. Trump’s advisers had planned to hold additional interviews this week with a goal of recommending a slate of finalists to the president.

The choice of a successor to Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whose term runs until mid-May, is arguably the most consequential personnel decision remaining in Trump’s second term. The Fed has had to balance the risks of a sharper slowdown in the job market with the risks of stickier inflation, which has stopped making progress toward the central bank’s 2% inflation target.

Powell’s successor could inherit a rate-setting committee that remains especially divided over how to balance those risks—driven in part by changes to trade and immigration policies—while facing pressure from Trump to deliver the lower interest rates that the president expects.

At the cabinet meeting, Trump suggested he wasn’t interested in completing the interviewing process that Bessent started. “We probably looked at 10" candidates, but “we have it down to one," he said.

During an event later in the day where Hassett joined him, Trump said, “I guess a potential Fed chair is here too. I don’t know. Are we allowed to say that? Potential?"

For months, Trump has been building anticipation over his choice to succeed Powell.

He has been regularly in touch with aides and allies, quizzing them on who they think he should select as his next Fed chair. He has regularly told some of these same people that he regrets selecting Powell for the job and blames former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for convincing him to choose Powell, according to people familiar with the matter.

People familiar with the process said that Trump could still change his mind about nominating Hassett. Some of these people said it was unlikely that would happen without the active intervention of Bessent, who has resisted appeals from Trump to take the job himself.

For Bessent, taking a strong position on who Trump should select for the job risks saddling him with the blame if Trump sours on his choice.

“Because he had proposed Powell for the Fed job, Mnuchin had to absorb abuse from the president at the start of virtually every meeting for his recommendation from that point on," Hassett later wrote in a 2021 book. “I will always remember how graceful Mnuchin was under attack."

Write to Brian Schwartz at brian.schwartz@wsj.com and Nick Timiraos at Nick.Timiraos@wsj.com