The White House is considering Derek Kan, an undersecretary at the Department of Transportation, for one of two open seats on the Federal Reserve Board, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Kan, who has been a senior adviser to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao since 2017, has served on the board of directors for Amtrak and was previously general manager of ride-hailing company Lyft Inc. He earned an MBA from Stanford University and studied economic history at the London School of Economics, according to a profile on the Department of Transportation website.
President Donald Trump has struggled to find candidates for the Fed that are acceptable to the senators who vote to confirm them. Trump has named four people for the two open seats on the board of governors. None of them has made it through the Senate, raising questions about the White House vetting process for his picks.
Conservative economic pundit Stephen Moore on May 2 was the latest Fed candidate to flame out, following businessman Herman Cain and economists Nellie Liang and Marvin Goodfriend.
The White House hasn’t made a short-list of candidates, but instead has a handful of names that the administration is actively considering as advisers continue to gather resumes, according to one of the people familiar with the matter who discussed the search on condition of anonymity. The White House declined to comment.
Another potential candidate to surface is conservative economist Judy Shelton, the current U.S. executive director for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Shelton, who’s served as an informal adviser to Trump, holds a Ph.D. in business administration with an emphasis on finance and international economics from the University of Utah.
Before the current zero-for-four streak Trump succeeded in filling three posts on the Fed board and elevating Jerome Powell, already a governor, to the chairmanship — though the president soured on him following the central bank’s string of 2018 interest rate increases. The president also won Senate confirmation of Fed Vice Chairman Richard Clarida and the Fed’s vice chairman for supervision, Randal Quarles.
