President Trump said Friday he will nominate Stephen Moore, a conservative economic analyst, to fill a vacancy on the Federal Reserve's seven-member board. Moore, an often polarizing figure in political circles, served as an economic adviser to Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, the AP reports, and helped draft Trump's tax cut plan. Trump has been harshly critical of the Fed's rate increases last year even after the central bank this week announced that it foresees no hikes this year. Moore, who has served as chief economist for the conservative Heritage Foundation, has also been critical of policy moves made by Chairman Jerome Powell, who was picked for the job by Trump. An ardent defender of tax cuts, Moore is close to Larry Kudlow, head of the White House National Economic Council.
They collaborated on the tax overhaul that Trump signed into law at the end of 2017, leading to changes that largely favored tax cuts for corporations and wealthier Americans with the idea of spurring investment and faster growth. The selection of Moore marks a deviation from Trump's previous selections for the Fed's board to a highly visible public figure who has long pushed conservative economic ideology. In an editorial last week in the Wall Street Journal, Moore estimated that Fed rate policies had reduced inflation-adjusted economic growth by as much as 1.5 percentage points in the past six months. Moore proposed that the Fed set short-term rates with an eye toward stabilizing commodity prices, rather than solely on overall inflation.
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