Chair Powell says he won’t step aside if Trump asks 

There are a few possible outcomes now that Trump will be moving back to Washington in January

share


This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.


This week’s FOMC meeting ended as expected Thursday, with central bankers opting to lower interest rates by 25 basis points. President-elect Donald Trump, however, may have been caught off guard by some of Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s comments. 

Powell asserted yesterday that he had no intention of leaving his post before his term ends in 2026, even if Trump asks him to step aside. 

“No,” Powell said simply when asked during the post-FOMC press conference if he would resign at the new administration’s request. 

To be clear, Trump said in June that he would allow Powell — a Trump appointee — to serve out his term. The comments come after the former president threatened to remove Powell during his first term in the White House, an act Powell said Thursday is not legally sound. 

Removing a chair, Powell said, is “not permitted under law.” 

The comments got us thinking about a topic we’ve talked about before: Trump’s plans for the SEC. I was in Nashville when Trump proclaimed at the Bitcoin 2024 conference that he would “fire Gensler on day one” — a promise that riled up the crowd more than I think even Trump imagined. 

There are a few possible outcomes now that we know Trump will be moving back to Washington in January. First, it’s worth noting that agency chairs often resign on their own once the president that nominated them leaves office. 

Chair Mary Jo White, who served under the Obama Administration, announced she’d be leaving shortly after Trump was elected. Jay Clayton, White’s successor, did the same after Trump lost his re-election bid in 2020. Both departures gave the incoming president the power to select an interim chair before ultimately submitting a nomination for Senate approval. 

We haven’t heard any comments from Gensler yet. But even if he doesn’t step aside before Inauguration Day, legal scholars generally agree that Trump would be allowed to name a current commissioner as acting chair. 

The concept of “firing” an agency chair is a bit of a legal gray area, though. 

“Courts’ general view is that the president can only remove a commissioner, including the chairman, of the SEC ‘for inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office,’” said Jon Ammons, a partner in Reed Smith’s onchain digital asset group.

Regardless, the current consensus seems to be that Commissioner Mark Uyeda would take over for Gensler — at least as acting chair before Trump nominates an outsider. Rumor has it that Robinhood chief legal officer Dan Gallagher, who has had his own unproductive dealings with the securities regulator, is on Trump’s short list. 

If I were Gensler, I’d give Powell a call. I bet he already has.


Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Tags

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

recent research

LTIPPanalysis.png

Research

This report is a retroactive analysis of Arbitrum's Long Term Incentives Pilot Program (LTIPP). We collect relevant data at a protocol level and review bi-weekly updates to analyze recipients, their strategies, and the impact of the incentives on high level growth metrics. In particular, we want to highlight outperformers and underperformers, and glean any best practices or lessons learned for protocols distributing ARB incentives in the future. The overarching goal is to synthesize lessons learned that the DAO can reference as it begins thinking about future incentives programs–namely, the working group for incentives that is being actively discussed–especially as Timeboost introduces new conditions for trading and economic activity.

article-image

Sponsored

AI project Zerebro intersects the spheres of artificial intelligence, finance, art, music, and culture

article-image

Allmight is focused on furthering the United States’ leadership in crypto

article-image

The conditions Charles Schwab is waiting for before jumping headfirst into crypto could take shape soon

article-image

The FCA’s director of payments and digital assets shared some takeaways from chats with crypto companies and law firms

article-image

Let’s take a look at how US equities typically perform this time of year and what we might see in the coming days

article-image

Lumina introduces transparency and permissionless integration via an OP stack-based optimium, challenging traditional oracle designs