| President Donald Trump’s attacks against Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and gripes about interest rates have become an almost daily occurrence. That’s driving speculation that whoever Trump picks to succeed Powell next year will have to promise lower interest rates, a notion that is now so widespread that Wall Street traders are starting to pile into bets on a rate cut next June in particular, the month after Powell’s term expires. Trump — and those traders — may find the path to lower rates is not so simple, however, as my colleagues Maria Eloisa Capurro and Edward Bolingbroke reported today.  Powell Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg Powell’s replacement can’t lower rates by fiat. There are 11 other members of the central bank’s rate-setting body who have a vote, and the president may be able to count on only a handful of those votes at most by the middle of 2026. At their meeting last month, Fed officials were unanimous on holding steady on rates, largely because of uncertainty about the effect of Trump’s tariffs on inflation. More: Fed Minutes Show Committee Split Around Inflation Worries A Fed chair “can’t act like a dictator,” says Mark Gertler, an economics professor at New York University. “He can’t call in the Marines or anything like that.” Even so, Fed watchers are gaming out what the personnel shifts might look like. All of the known top contenders for Powell’s replacement — former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett — have been out and about making the case for lower rates. Trump will also be able to select one other governor in January, when Biden appointee Adriana Kugler’s term expires. Two current governors whom Trump appointed in his first term — Michelle Bowman and Christopher Waller — have sounded more supportive of rate cuts lately, but what they’ll be thinking a year from now is an open question. Futures markets see lower rates over the next year anyway, with about four quarter percentage-point cuts priced in. That’s nowhere near as fast as Trump would like, though, based on his most recent social media post on the subject: He said today rates were “AT LEAST 3 Points too high.” — Matthew Boesler | 
