President Donald Trump said Friday he plans to nominate his former campaign adviser, Stephen Moore, to the Federal Reserve Board.
“It is my pleasure to announce that @StephenMoore, a very respected Economist, will be nominated to serve on the Fed Board. I have known Steve for a long time – and have no doubt that he will be an outstanding choice!” Trump tweeted.
Moore, 59, is the author of “Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive Our Economy” and a former member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board. He was also formerly a CNN contributor.
A CNN spokeswoman confirmed that Moore is no longer a contributor, but did not comment on when the relationship ended.
The pending nomination was first reported by Bloomberg News.
Trump confirmed the report in remarks to reporters when he arrived in Palm Beach, Florida, saying: “He’s going to be a great. He’s going to be great on the Fed.”
There are currently two vacancies on the seven-member Fed Board.
Former pizza executive and Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is also under consideration.
Moore, a visiting fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, has been tough critic of the Fed. He’s blamed the central bank for slowing the economy while touting Trump’s policies, including in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial.
“When President Trump fumed that the Fed’s rate increases were smothering his growth policies, he wasn’t entirely wrong,” Moore co-wrote with Louis Woodhill, a Houston-based entrepreneur and angel investor.
Trump hasn’t been shy about criticizing the Fed, targeting Chairman Jerome Powell, a former investment banker named by Trump.
The President blasted the central bank for going “loco” for raising rates four times last year. Those verbal public attacks have slowed as the Fed has signaled it will pause raising rates this year – a fact that Powell says has had no influence on how the central bank’s interest rate setting decisions.
In a late December interview, Moore, who is a close friend of White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow, blamed the end-of-the year stock market sell-off on the Fed’s monetary policy decisions – and suggested Trump should take the unprecedented step of removing board members.
“By the way, I think the trigger for this massive sell-off has been an absurd Federal Reserve Board policy that I believe the people on the Federal Reserve Board should be thrown out for economic malpractice,” Moore said on a Dec. 22 interview with Red Apple Group chairman and chief executive John Catsimatidis’s radio show.
Nominations to the Fed Board require Senate confirmation.
CNN’s Brian Stelter, Kevin Liptak, Jeremy Diamond and Richard Davis contributed to this report.
