President Donald Trump announced Friday morning that he will nominate Heritage Foundation economist Stephen Moore to the Federal Reserve board of governors.
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 he will be an outstanding choice!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 22, 2019
Moore has long been a supporter of Trump, including throughout the 2016 presidential election. He has written approvingly of the president’s criticisms of the Federal Reserve.
“I believe the people on the Federal Reserve Board should be thrown out for economic malpractice,” he said in December.
Moore also spoke disapprovingly of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, noting, “I always thought he was a bad choice. He’s been a Fed guy for many years. Donald Trump wanted to drain the swamp. The Fed is the swamp.”
He also authored a recent op-ed titled, “Fire the Fed” in which he likened Powell to a misguided pilot who lost his way.
An official familiar with the nomination said Moore’s latest op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on the Fed is what pushed his nomination forward. Moore co-authored an op-ed in which he wrote that “the Fed should stabilize the value of the dollar by adopting the commodity-price rule used successfully by former Fed chief Paul Volcker,” explaining that “to break the crippling inflation of the 1970s, Mr. Volcker linked Fed monetary policy to real-time changes in commodity prices.”
Trump has railed against Powell for raising interest rates in recent months, alleging that he is tanking the economy.