Trump says he'll name people to 2 jobs closely watched by Wall Street

President Donald Trump says he will soon be naming a new Federal Reserve governor and Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner.

Trump was speaking to reporters on Sunday when he was asked about Federal Reserve Gov. Adriana Kugler’s sudden resignation on Friday. Kugler, whose term was set to end in January 2026, said she would step down this week.

“She left early, and I think she left because she agreed with me on interest rates, and yet they were on the other side of the ballpark. So I’ll be announcing that probably over the next couple of days,” Trump said of Kugler and his plans to replace her.

Former President Joe Biden had nominated Kugler to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in September 2023. She was to serve the rest of the term of former Federal Reserve Gov. Lael Brainard after Brainard left the central bank to lead Biden’s White House National Economic Council.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Kugler’s abrupt departure comes amid Trump’s ongoing beef with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Trump has repeatedly called on Powell to cut interest rates and step down. Powell, however, said he won’t and has not responded directly to Trump’s attacks.

Naming Kugler’s replacement will allow Trump to reshape the Federal Reserve based on his preferences. The Board of Governors comprises seven members. They include Powell, Christopher Waller, and Michelle Bowman.

Waller and Bowman had given a rare double dissent last week after the Federal Open Markets Committee voted to keep rates unchanged.

In his interview on Sunday, Trump said that he will appoint a new Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner “over the next three or four days.” He fired the previous commissionerErika McEntarfer, on Friday after the BLS released a weak jobs report and made downward revisions to job numbers from May and June.

“We had no confidence. The numbers were ridiculous, what she announced, but that was just one negative number,” Trump said of the job numbers.

“If you remember, just before the election, this woman came out with these phenomenal numbers on Biden’s economy. Phenomenal numbers. And then right after the election, they announced that those numbers were wrong. And that’s what they did the other day. So it’s a scam in my opinion,” he added.

McEntarfer was appointed to the BLS by Biden in January 2024.

The BLS may revise its job figures, as the bureau continues to collect additional data after it releases its initial estimates. The BLS said on Friday that its latest revisions were “larger than normal” after it lowered total nonfarm payroll employment by 125,000 and 133,000 for May and June, respectively.

Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that Trump wasn’t firing people because they were reporting data he disagreed with.

“The president wants his own people there so that when we see the numbers, they’re more transparent and more reliable,” Hassett said.

“And if there are big changes and big revisions, we expect more big revisions for the jobs data in September, for example, then we want to know why. We want people to explain it to us,” he continued.