Waller, in the running for chair, says Fed should cut in September

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller, a candidate to take over from Jerome Powell as chair in 2026, on Wednesday voiced his support for starting a rate-cutting cycle in two weeks and said the central bank has the flexibility to adjust that pace in the future.

“When the labor market turns bad, it turns bad fast. … So for me, I think we need to start cutting rates at the next meeting,” Waller said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “We don’t have to go into a lock sequence of steps. We can kind of see where things are going, because people are still worried about tariff inflation. I’m not, but everybody else is.”

Considered to be on President Donald Trump’s short list of potential successors for Fed chair, Waller was one of two Fed governors to dissent from the July Federal Open Market Committee decision to hold the central bank’s benchmark interest rate steady in a range between 4.25%-4.5%. It was the first time two governors had opposed a committee rate decision in more than 30 years.

Waller believes there should be multiple cuts over the next few months, saying interest rates today are perhaps 1.0 to 1.5 percentage points above their “neutral” level.

“I would say over the next three or six months, we could see multiple cuts coming in. Whether it’s like every other meeting, every meeting, we’ll have to wait and see [what] the data says,” Waller said.

Waller acknowledged that tariffs are a tax on the consumer that will slow growth, but he doesn’t see a recession in his economic forecast.

The Fed’s next policy meeting is scheduled for Sept. 16- 17.

Waller declined to comment on Trump’s attempt to fire fellow Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. But he reiterated the importance of Fed independence and said the central bank will maintain its independence whoever assume leadership.

“The independence of the Fed is critical for everything we do, and there are things that are going on that make people worried, but I still believe that we have an independent Fed,” Waller said. “People that are appointed will behave that way and act in an apolitical fashion.”