A growing chorus of advisers inside and outside the Trump administration are pushing another name to serve as the next chair of the Federal Reserve: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

President Donald Trump said Friday he would name a successor “very soon” to replace Jerome Powell, whose term as Fed chair ends in May 2026. The small list of candidates under consideration has included Kevin Warsh, a former Fed official whom Trump interviewed for the Treasury secretary role in November, according to people familiar with the matter.

But Bessent — who is leading Trump’s effort to kickstart the US economy with sweeping changes to trade, taxes and regulation — is also now one of the contenders for the job, Bloomberg sources said. Formal interviews for the position have not begun, they said.

“I have the best job in Washington,” Bessent said in response to a request for comment. “The president will decide who’s best for the economy and the American people.”

A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, disputed the reporting without providing further specifics.

As Treasury chief, Bessent would traditionally play a key role in the search and interview process for the next Fed chair. It’s unclear if he would recuse himself as Trump begins to make his decision.

Global tariffs stand for now, court says

President Donald Trump can continue to enforce his global tariffs for now, a federal appeals court held in a win for the president on one of his signature economic policies.

The order Tuesday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit extends an earlier, short-term reprieve for the administration as it presses a challenge to a lower court ruling last month that blocked the tariffs.

The Justice Department had argued that U.S. officials’ concerns about ongoing trade negotiations outweighed the economic harm claimed by the small businesses that sued.

The Washington-based court put the case on an expedited track, citing the “issues of exceptional importance” at stake, and scheduled arguments for July 31. The court didn’t offer a detailed reason for siding with the administration at this stage, indicating in the order that the government had met its burden for showing that keeping the lower court’s injunction on hold was “warranted.”

No judge noted a dissent.

world bank cuts growth forecast

President Donald Trump’s trade wars are expected to slash economic growth this year in the United States and around the world, the World Bank forecast Tuesday.

Citing “a substantial rise in trade barriers’’ but without mentioning Trump by name, the 189-country lender predicted that the U.S. economy – the world’s largest – would grow half as fast (1.4%) this year as it did in 2024 (2.8%). That marked a downgrade from the 2.3%

U.S. growth it had forecast back for 2025 back in January.

The bank also lopped 0.4 percentage points off its forecast for global growth this year. It now expects the world economy to expand just 2.3% in 2025, down from 2.8% in 2024.

In a forward to the latest version of the twice-yearly Global Economic Prospects report, World Bank chief economist Indermit Gill wrote that the global economy has missed its chance for the “soft landing’’ — slowing enough to tame inflation without generating serious pain — it appeared headed for just six months ago. “The world economy today is once more running into turbulence,” Gill wrote. “Without a swift course correction, the harm to living standards could be deep.’’

Google workers get more buyout offers

Google has offered buyouts to another swath of its workforce across several key divisions in a fresh round of cost cutting coming ahead of a court decision that could order a breakup of its internet empire.

The company confirmed the streamlining that was reported by several news outlets. It’s not clear how many employees are affected, but the offers were made to staff in Google’s search, advertising, research and engineering units, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Google employs most of the nearly 186,000 workers on the worldwide payroll of its parent company, Alphabet Inc. Google has been periodically jettisoning workers since 2023 after the pandemic drove feverish demand for online services.

Compiled from Associated Press and Bloomberg reports.