President Trump on Monday stepped up his attacks on the Federal Reserve and Chairman Jerome Powell. Trump sent a letter to Powell showing interest rates around the world and urging him to lower U.S. rates, the White House said.
“Jerome, you are, as usual, ‘Too Late.’ You have cost the USA a fortune and continue to do so,” Trump wrote. “You should lower the rate — by a lot. Hundreds of billions of dollars being lost! No inflation.”
In a post on his social media site, the president shared the same letter and said that Powell and the Fed board of governors “should be ashamed of themselves” and called for U.S. interest rates to be 1% or lower. “If they were doing their job properly, our Country would be saving Trillions of Dollars in Interest Cost,” Trump said of Fed bankers.
Trump has flirted with the idea of firing Powell, though he backed off that move, which was likely to rattle markets. He is instead reportedly considered naming Powell’s replacement months before the Fed chair’s term expires next May.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Bloomberg TV Monday that the president may use the next expected opening on the Fed’s board of governors to appoint Powell’s eventual successor.
“There's a seat opening up, a 14-year seat opening up in January. So we've given thought to the idea that perhaps that person would go on to become the chair when Jay Powell leaves in May, or we could appoint the new chair in May,” Bessent said. “Unfortunately, that's just a two-year seat.”
In testimony before Congress last week, Powell made clear that the Fed paused its rate-cutting campaign to wait and see what kind of inflation emerges as a result of Trump’s tariff policy. “If you just look at the basic data and don't look at the forecast, you would say that we would've continued cutting," Powell acknowledged.