U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 26, 2025.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
President Donald Trump said Tuesday he will soon have a “majority” of his own nominees on the Federal Reserve board of governors who will back his desire to slash interest rates.
Trump’s comment at a Cabinet meeting came hours after he took the unprecedented step of moving to fire central bank Governor Lisa Cook, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, from the board.
Trump has already appointed two of the Fed board’s seven governors, and he is poised to pick another to replace Adriana Kugler, who announced her retirement earlier this summer.
Trump has selected Stephen Miran, one of his top economic advisors, to serve out the rest of Kugler’s term, which ends Jan. 31, 2026.
“We’ll have a majority very shortly,” Trump said Tuesday afternoon. “So that’ll be great.”
“Once we have a majority, housing is going to swing, and it’s going to be great,” he said. “People are paying too high an interest rate. That’s the only problem with us. We have to get the rates down a little bit.”
The president had been asked who he was considering as a replacement for Cook.
“Well, we have some very good people for that position, and I think we have some very good people we’re down to,” he said. “I think I maybe, in my own mind, have somebody that I like.”
He also once again hurled criticism Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who has repeatedly rebuffed Trump’s demands that he lower benchmark rates by multiple percentage points.
“Because of him and his high interest rates, the housing is less than it could be,” Trump said of Powell. “We’re going to get that straightened out very quickly.”
Trump said in a letter issued Monday night that he was firing Cook over an investigation launched by his Department of Justice into allegations about her mortgages.
Cook will file a lawsuit to block her ouster, her attorney said Tuesday morning.
In a statement issued while Trump’s Cabinet meeting was ongoing, the Fed said that Cook has indicated that she will ask the courts to “confirm her ability to continue to fulfill her responsibilities” as a governor.
The central bank said it will “abide by any court decision.”
The statement also noted, “Long tenures and removal protections for governors serve as a vital safeguard, ensuring that monetary policy decisions are based on data, economic analysis, and the long-term interests of the American people.”
When a reporter asked Trump about that statement during the meeting, he said, “I’d abide by the court.”
Around the same time, White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement that Trump “exercised his lawful authority to remove a governor on the federal board of governors for cause.”
—CNBC’s Erin Doherty contributed to this report.
