It’s one of the most important questions surrounding the Federal Reserve in 2026, and Fed Chair Jerome Powell has been pointedly mum.
“I’m focused on my remaining time as chair,” Powell said at the December press conference. “I haven’t got anything new on that to tell you.”
The question: whether Powell will remain on the Fed once his chairmanship ends in May. He will have two years left on his term as governor and Powell himself has invited the speculation by repeatedly refusing to answer the question.
It’s a question being asked on Wall Street as Fed watchers try to game out the makeup of the rate-setting Open Market Committee and whether appointees of President Donald Trump will have control of the Fed’s powerful Board of Governors. And it’s being asked in the Treasury Department and the White House, where they are trying to figure out how many slots on the board Trump will have to fill this year, who might fill them and when those slots will be available.
It’s a question that has not been asked in decades because prior chairs, like Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen, slid quietly off the board into other government positions, retirement or the private sector with time remaining on their governor terms. That the question about Powell is even unclear is a sign of the times with a president who, in unprecedented ways, openly seeks control of Fed policy and a Fed chair who has defiantly resisted that encroachment and tried to protect the Fed’s independence.
