Washington
Cnn
–
President Donald Trump resumed his criticism on Thursday against the president of the federal reserve Jerome Powell, calling for his “termination” so as not to quickly reduce interest rates. His comments occur a day after the Central Bank chief pronounced a striking warning regarding the effect of Trump’s radical prices on the economy.
Trump’s first comments on Powell came early during the day, in an article on social networks. But the president continued to tear the chief of the Fed later in the day, during a meeting of the oval office, piling up from political pressure so that Powell reduces interest rates.
Early Thursday morning, Trump was unleashed to the Fed leader in an article on social networks, saying that the American central bank is lagging behind its European counterpart. Later, the European Central Bank announced Thursday morning that it reduced interest rates for the seventh time in the past year.
“Jerome Powell of the Fed, which is still too late and bad, published yesterday a report which was another, and typical,” Mess! ” Trump wrote.
Powell said on Wednesday at an event in Chicago that the Trump administration had made “very fundamental policy changes”, including radical rates that are “much more important than expected”. He said that such changes were like nothing of modern history, putting the Fed in unexplored waters and on a path to face a challenge that he has not seen for decades.
But Powell’s comments were not different from those of the other Fed officials in recent weeks. Most have said Trump prices should push inflation and unemployment. Powell has carried out the Fed monetary policy by making decisions that depend on economic data in the search for the double mandate of the maximum employment of the central bank and stable prices. The ECB, which focuses only on price stability, also has a data -based approach such as Fed.
“Let me say very squarely, I have a lot of respect for my estimated colleague and friend Jay Powell. We have a solid stable relationship between the central bankers,” the president of the BCE Lagarde said on Thursday at a press conference after the central bank announced its latest political movement. “I think the relationship is decisive to have a solid financial infrastructure on which to ensure that there is financial stability.”
Meanwhile, some billionaires, such as Ray Dalio, have made criticism of Trump’s prices a little further, saying that the American economy could already be in or near a recession.
Powell was appointed president of the Fed by Trump for the first time in 2018 and was then renamed by President Joe Biden in 2022. His current mandate ended in May 2026.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to remove Powell from his post, and the criticism of his head of the Fed dates back to 2018, when Powell took the reins of the most powerful central bank in the world.
The Fed increased interest rates for a handful of times that year on the concerns that a historically tight labor market could stimulate higher inflation. In 2019, Trump even called Powell “the enemy”. In March 2020, Trump told journalists that he had the right to withdraw (Powell) as president “and that he has so far made a lot of bad decisions, in my opinion”, after the markets have landed in the middle of the pandemic. But he also congratulated Powell for reducing zero rates to avoid an economic collapse.
After meeting Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Trump doubled his review of Powell while responding to journalists.
“I don’t think he is doing the job. It’s too late. Always too late. A little slow and I’m not happy with him. I let him know,” said Trump. “And if I want it, it will be very quickly outside there, believe me.”
“We have a president of the federal reserve that makes politics,” he said, adding that the Fed not reducing interest rates “plays directly in her hands (from Europe).”
“The Fed really owes the American people to obtain interest rates, it is the only thing it is good,” said Trump. “I think at some point, he will. He will have a lot of political pressure, you know they are also political and I think there is a lot of political pressure to lower interest rates. ”
CNN contacted the Fed.
But Trump’s desire to dismiss Powell is in contradiction with the point of view of his own secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent. Earlier this week, Bessent told Bloomberg in an interview that “monetary policy is a jewelry box that was to be preserved”.
At its confirmation hearing in January, Bessent told Congress legislators that the Fed should remain independent. Delete it not only investors who are already worried about Trump’s prices, but it could destroy the credibility of the central bank, which it needs to combat inflation. It is as important as ever, economists expecting the prices to lead to higher prices. Countries with independent central banks generally have lower inflation.
For his part, Powell obviously noted that the abolition of an Fed president is “not authorized under the law” and said that he intended to serve the rest of his mandate.
However, this legal protection, which results from the status of the Fed as an independent government institution, can be an open question. Trump dismissed two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission, also a long -standing independent agency, arguing that their “continuous service on the FTC is incompatible with the priorities of my administration”, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal of a letter that Trump sent them.
Trump on Wednesday dismissed two Democrats on the board of directors of three members of the National Credit Union Administration, a federal and regulator of credit cooperatives. Todd Harper, one of the officials rejected by Trump, said in an article on LinkedIn that his dismissal “is false”.
“He violates the bipartite statutory framework adopted by the congress to protect members of the credit union and their deposits. The attack on the Trump administration also undermines the independence, balance and the important work of the NCUA,” wrote Harper. “If a president can dismiss a member of the Board of Directors of the NCUA at any time, how to maintain public confidence in the regulatory system of financial services of our country?”
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court should review a case that could severely weaken the independence of the Fed.
The 1935 case, executor of Humphrey v. United States, has established a precedent on the quantity of power of an practicing American president in the abolition of agency heads. The case involved William Humphrey, “a conservative commissioner injured at the Federal Trade Commission, which was dismissed by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 for policy differences,” wrote the Brookings Institution in a 2018 analysis.
Humphrey died shortly after his dismissal, but his executor continued his damage. The Court ruled in favor of the executor, affirming that the Constitution does not say that the president has the “unlimited power of referral”. In February, the Trump administration said the case should be canceled.
In addition to FTC dismissals, Trump also dismissed a democratic member of the National Labor Relations Commission and another person sitting at Merit Systems Protection Board who identifies himself as a Democrat – both who continued for their job. Chief judge John Roberts asked both parties to submit memories last week.
