Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Tuesday that it is a mistake for Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, to attend oral arguments at the Supreme Court this week over whether President Trump has the authority to remove Lisa D. Cook, a governor at the central bank.
Speaking to CNBC on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr. Bessent said that Mr. Powell’s decision to attend the arguments on Wednesday risked further politicizing the Fed.
“If you’re trying not to politicize the Fed, for the Fed chair to be sitting there trying to put his thumb on the scale is a real mistake,” Mr. Bessent said.
But Mr. Bessent is offering advice to Mr. Powell that he did not heed personally.
When the Supreme Court heard arguments in November over Mr. Trump’s authority to use a 1977 emergency law to impose tariffs on scores of countries, Mr. Bessent was in attendance. He sat in the front row of the gallery with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and the U.S. trade representative, Jamieson Greer.
The Treasury secretary told Fox News before the arguments that he wanted to be there and have a “ringside seat.”
Mr. Trump also considered attending the arguments last year but ultimately decided against it to avoid becoming a distraction.
Both Mr. Powell and the Federal Reserve as an institution are co-defendants in the case that the Supreme Court will be hearing. Mr. Bessent is not a defendant in the case on presidential tariff powers.
Mr. Powell is also not the first Fed chair to attend a Supreme Court argument. Paul A. Volcker attended in 1985 in the case of Governors of the Federal Reserve System v. Dimension Financial Corporation.
Both Mr. Bessent and Mr. Trump have made clear that the outcome of the tariff case will be pivotal to the administration’s economic agenda. They have warned that if the court rules against them, it will create chaos by forcing the government to refund billions of dollars of tariff revenue to businesses and weaken the president’s ability to negotiate with trading partners.
Mr. Powell will attend the arguments on the heels of his own confrontation with the administration, which he directly called out in an extraordinary video message last week after the Justice Department sent the central bank grand jury subpoenas seeking information about a $2.5 billion renovation project of the Fed’s headquarters in Washington.
In an interview in Davos, Mr. Bessent said that he valued the independence of the Federal Reserve.
“Yes, of course,” he told The New York Times. “I talk about it all the time.”
Asked about the criminal investigation into Mr. Powell and Mr. Trump’s attempts to fire Ms. Cook, Mr. Bessent said, “There still needs to be accountability.”
Ms. Cook, who has been a Fed governor since 2022, sued after Mr. Trump tried to oust her in August, arguing that the law that established the Fed allowed presidents to dismiss members only “for cause.”
The administration has accused Ms. Cook of mortgage fraud. She has not been charged with wrongdoing, and denies the allegations, which relate to loan documents she signed before joining the Fed. The Supreme Court ruled in October that Ms. Cook could stay in her post while her lawsuit played out.
Peter S. Goodman contributed reporting from Davos, Switzerland. Colby Smith contributed reporting from New York.
Alan Rappeport is an economic policy reporter for The Times, based in Washington. He covers the Treasury Department and writes about taxes, trade and fiscal matters.
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