US President Donald Trump returned to the White House from his Bedminster mansion on August 3, 2025, speaking with journalists at Lehigh Valley International Airport in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Brendan Smirowski | AFP | Getty Images
President Donald Trump plans to name two important vacant alternatives over the next few days. One is to fill in the Federal Reserve spots, and the other is to replace the Director of Labor Statistics.
Both spots were open on Friday – the Fed’s position through Gov. Adriana Coogler’s surprise resignation and other positions from Trump’s astonishing decision to fire Erica Mantelfer, the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner.
Trump told reporters on Sunday that he was considering several possible candidates for the Fed’s spot and is ready to replace Mcentarfer soon.
“I have a few people,” Trump said of Coogler’s vacancies. “We’ll announce it in a few days.”
Kugler’s Fed term expired in January next year, but she decided to close in advance. In a letter submitted to Trump on Friday, Kugler gave no reason for the move.
As Fed Governor, Kugler is a permanent voter on the Federal Open Market Committee, setting the main funding level for central banks used as PEG for interest rates across the US economy. Additionally, the governor will help craft banking regulations.
During the short stint less than two years later, Coogler consistently coincided with the policies of Chairman Jerome Powell, who was on the receiving end of frequent Trump criticism.
Trump said future Fed candidates will be tested by Litmus on whether they will vote to lower funds.
Coogler’s resignation will “jump-start the Fed’s Trumpization by giving Trump a vacant seat to President Trump by having President Trump explicitly designate Powell’s successor as the chairman of the federal government,” said Krishna Guha, head of global policy and central bank strategy at Evercore ISI.
Potential successors include former Fed governor Kevin Warsh, Treasury Secretary Scott Becent and National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett.
The controversy over job counting
Trump fired Mantelfer after a disappointing non-farm salary report on Friday. Not only did the BLS report that the economy added just 73,000 jobs in July, but also revised its total for the past two months to 258,000 lower.
In Sunday’s Truth Social Post, Trump argued that Mantelfer was responsible for “the biggest miscalculation of over 50 years.”
Revisions to monthly job numbers are common as BLS receives more information through surveys of facilities used to calculate non-farm payroll figures. However, revisions have risen as survey responses declined over time, with BLS adjusting its 12-month count in March 2024 at 818,000 last year.
“I think it’s really important to get a new eye out there in order to modernize labor data. It has to be transparent, so it has to be reliable. The market has to be able to make big bets.”
However, McEntarfer’s firing politicized the BLS statistics used to set policies and as a barometer of multiple aspects of the economy, attracted widespread criticism due to concerns that the move could politicize politics.
“While the potential politicization of the Fed has been debated over the past few months, the risk of politicizing the data collection process should not be overlooked,” writes Michael Feroli, chief US economist at JPMorgan Chase. “Lowing from a soft landing analogy is as dangerous to have a flawed instrument panel as having a submissive partisan pilot.”
Trump has not publicly discussed potential alternatives to McEntarfer. Deputy Commissioner William Wiertrowsky is currently in the acting role.
