United States President Donald Trump has repeated his call for Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to step down, the latest in a series of attacks that have raised concern about the independence of the US central bank.
Trump made the call for Powell to “resign immediately” on Wednesday after his administration’s top housing regulator urged the US Congress to launch an investigation into the central banker.
Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said in a post on X that Powell should be investigated for his “political bias” and “deceptive testimony” about renovations at the Federal Reserve headquarters in Washington, DC.
In a Truth Social post responding to Pulte’s comments, Trump said “Too Late” – a nickname used to lambast Powell for not lowering rates faster – should resign.
Trump’s latest broadside comes days after he sent Powell a letter demanding that the central banker lower the benchmark interest rate, which is currently set at a range of 4.25 percent to 4.5 percent, by “a lot”.
The US president has repeatedly criticised Powell for not backing faster rate cuts, arguing that the central banker’s cautious stance is holding back economic growth and that concerns about inflation are overblown.
Lower interest rates reduce the cost of borrowing for businesses and consumers, helping boost economic growth.
But rate cuts also have the effect of increasing inflation, which central banks typically wish to keep low, and Trump’s sweeping tariffs are generally expected to put upward pressure on prices.
On Tuesday, Powell told a panel discussion at the European Central Bank Forum in Portugal that the central bank had taken a wait-and-see approach to rate cuts in order to gauge the impact of Trump’s tariffs, many of which are in limbo ahead of a July 9 deadline.
“In effect, we went on hold when we saw the size of the tariffs, and essentially all inflation forecasts for the United States went up materially as a consequence of the tariffs,” Powell said.
“We didn’t overreact. In fact, we didn’t react at all; we’re simply taking some time.”
Trump has repeatedly demanded that Powell, whose term does not expire until May 2026, step down or be removed since coming into office in January.
Last week, Trump told reporters that he would “love” for Powell to step down “if he wanted to”.
In April, Trump said that Powell’s “termination cannot come fast enough,” before backing off his threat after stocks and the US dollar dipped sharply.
Under US federal law, the US president is only permitted to fire the Fed chair “for cause”, a provision widely interpreted to mean specific misconduct, not policy decisions.
In May, the US Supreme Court reaffirmed precedent limiting the president’s ability to remove the top central banker in a ruling that singled out the Federal Reserve as having a distinct status compared with other independent agencies.
Trump earlier on Tuesday told reporters that he had “two or three” choices in mind to succeed Powell without elaborating on who is under consideration.
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