WASHINGTON >> The Senate has confirmed President Donald Trump’s nomination of Randal Quarles to serve on the Federal Reserve. It’s the first step in Trump’s efforts to remake the nation’s powerful central bank.

Quarles is the head of a Salt Lake City-based investment firm. He was approved on a 65-32 vote Thursday for a vacant Fed board term.

Then the Senate — by voice vote — approved him to be vice chairman.

There are currently three vacancies on the Fed’s seven member-board. Quarles is the only nomination Trump has made to the central bank.

When Trump was running for president, he strongly criticized the Fed for following interest-rate policies that he said favored Democrats, and for imposing burdensome rules on banks that he said had hurt the economic recovery.