Trump Nominates Bowman as Fed Vice Chair for Supervision to Ease Regulations

U.S. President Donald Trump has nominated Michelle Bowman, a member of the Federal Reserve Board (Fed), to be the Vice Chair for Supervision, effectively the second-in-command at the Fed, according to reports by The New York Times (NYT) and others on the 12th (local time).

This appointment follows the resignation of Vice Chair Michael Barr on the 28th of last month. Bowman will be appointed Vice Chair upon confirmation by the Senate Banking Committee.

Michelle Bowman, Federal Reserve (Fed) Board Member. Photo by Reuters Yonhap News

Bowman was appointed during the first term of the Trump administration and previously worked as a bank supervisor in Kansas.

The NYT anticipates that Bowman will adopt a more lenient approach to financial regulation compared to her predecessor, Vice Chair Barr. She previously voted against Barr’s proposal to strengthen capital requirements for banks such as JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. At a conference held last month in Kansas, Bowman stated, "We need to return to a regulatory approach that appropriately calibrates regulatory requirements and supervisory standards, taking a practical approach to identifying and addressing the most urgent issues."

Wall Street, which has expressed dissatisfaction with the Fed’s regulatory stance, is expected to welcome Bowman.

Within the Fed, Bowman is classified as a prominent hawk (favoring monetary tightening). When the Fed decided on a big cut (a 0.5 percentage point interest rate reduction) for the first time in four years last September, she was the only one to vote for a smaller cut of 0.25 percentage points. Since then, she has maintained the position that additional rate cuts should be approached cautiously until it is certain that inflation returns to the Fed’s 2% target. Last month, she also indicated that she would not support immediate rate cuts, stating, "Especially while the labor market remains strong, the risks to price stability are greater."

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