By Matt Egan, CNN
New York (CNN) — President Donald Trump plans to announce his pick for the next Federal Reserve chair on Friday morning. Among the finalists is one man who checks many of the boxes: BlackRock executive Rick Rieder.
The influential investor has the respect of Wall Street and deep knowledge of complex financial markets. Rieder is believed to prefer lower interest rates, a top priority for a president who wants massive rate cuts. And Rieder looks the part. His frequent television appearances are playing well inside the White House.
No wonder Rieder vaulted to the top of the list of Fed chair candidates on prediction markets over the past few days.
That changed Thursday night, when Trump said his pick wouldn’t surprise people, and “a lot of people think that this person could have been there a few years ago.” That strongly suggests former Fed official Kevin Warsh, who was a finalist for Fed chair in 2017, when Trump ultimately picked current Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Warsh was at the White House Thursday shortly after Trump slammed Powell as a “moron.”
But it certainly doesn’t eliminate Rieder, who still has better chances on prediction market Kalshi than White House economist Kevin Hassett and current Fed Governor Christopher Waller.
And yet some of Rieder’s prior comments on Trump policy priorities, his lack of government experience and political donations to Trump critics could work against his candidacy for the powerful position.
Rieder, a dark-horse contender for the Fed job, has in the past criticized one of Trump’s signature legislative achievements during his first term: slashing the corporate tax rate to 21%.
“I think 21% is too low,” Rieder told CNN in March 2021. The BlackRock exec argued the benefit to business is “too high,” pointing to the fact that many corporations used their tax savings to reward shareholders with massive share buybacks.
During the 2020 campaign, Joe Biden proposed raising the corporate tax rate.
Rieder said at the time that the US economy could “definitely” withstand raising the corporate tax rate.
“I would imagine he didn’t bring that up during his interview at the White House,” quipped Stephanie Roth, chief economist at Wolfe Research.
It’s not clear if Rieder still favors a higher corporate tax rate, which is not something the Fed chair has a direct say on in the first place.
A BlackRock spokesperson declined to comment on Rieder’s five-year-old comments.
During that same 2021 interview, Rieder downplayed inflation concerns bubbling up at the time. He said inflation could accelerate to around 2.5% but stressed he wasn’t worried about “explosive” price increases.
Rieder’s comments put him within the then-consensus among economists and even Fed officials who believed inflation would not become a persistent problem.
But by June 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, broken supply chains and aggressive stimulus from the federal government, inflation skyrocketed to a four-decade high of 9.1%.
Rieder may also have some policy differences from Trump on another top priority: immigration.
‘You need immigration’
In April 2023, Rieder voiced support for the exact opposite of Trump’s current immigration crackdown.
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