Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell threw cold water on President Donald Trump’s attempt to sway the Fed into cutting interest rates during a rare face-to-face meeting Thursday.
Trump invited the Fed chair to the White House for their first meeting of his second term to ramp up the pressure on Powell to slash rates. But Powell—whom Trump has called a “major loser” for refusing to bend to his will—rebuffed him.
According to a Fed statement, Powell told Trump that he will make monetary policy decisions “based solely on careful, objective, and non-political analysis.”
Trump has been trying to get the Fed to slash interest rates in a bid to juice economic growth amid turmoil from his trade wars. He has repeatedly threatened to fire Powell—whom he nominated to serve as Fed Chair during his first term in 2017—if he doesn’t comply, rattling financial markets that depend on the central bank’s independence from political meddling.
But the Supreme Court noted last week that Trump cannot legally remove Powell, whose term ends in 2026, leaving the president to vent on his Truth Social account. After the Fed decided to keep its key rate unchanged at 4.3 percent last week, Trump fumed, “‘Too Late’ Jerome Powell is a FOOL, who doesn’t have a clue.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump told Powell during Thursday’s meeting that he “believes the Fed chair is making a mistake by not lowering interest rates, which is putting us at an economic disadvantage to China in other countries.”
According to the Fed statement, Powell, in return, stressed that “the path of policy will depend entirely on incoming economic information and what that means for the outlook,”
The Fed chair told reporters last week that Trump’s tariffs are causing “a great deal of uncertainty” and are likely to trigger “a rise in inflation, a slowdown in economic growth, and a rise in unemployment”—undermining the central bank’s mandate to keep inflation low and employment strong.
The post Fed Chair Slaps Down Trump’s Demands to His Face appeared first on The Daily Beast.
