President Donald Trump blasted Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell Wednesday for not stopping inflation, saying “the Fed has done a terrible job on Bank Regulation” and criticizing its priorities—just hours after the Fed announced it would pause interest rate cuts.
President Donald Trump speaks before signing the Laken Riley Act in the East Room of the White ... [+]
In the Truth Social post just after 4:15 p.m. EST, Trump criticized “Jay Powell and the Fed” and claimed he will have to stop inflation by “unleashing American Energy production,” and “reigniting American Manufacturing.”
“If the Fed had spent less time on DEI, gender ideology, “green” energy, and fake climate change, Inflation would never have been a problem,” Trump said in the post.
Trump’s rant came hours after the Federal Reserve announced it would keep interest rates at the same level set last month—at 4.25% to 4.5%—despite Trump previously saying he would “demand that interest rates drop immediately.”
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The Fed’s Wednesday announcement of holding interest rates was widely anticipated, but came after months of interest rate cuts. Prior to Wednesday, the Fed had lowered rates at every meeting it had since September.
Powell was appointed by Trump in 2017 during his first term, though the president has often taken issue with Powell’s setting of interest rates, saying in 2019 he was “disappointed” in the pace of cuts. Trump was critical of Powell and the Fed a number of times in his first term for not lowering rates fast enough, once saying it should cut interest rates to zero or lower so the U.S. could “start to refinance our debt.” Powell was reappointed in 2021 by Biden, and is serving a four-year term that runs through May 2026. He is also serving a 14-year term on the FEd board that ends in 2028, Bloomberg reported. Trump has acknowledged his disputes with Powell, though, telling Bloomberg last year ahead of the election that he intended to let Powell “serve it out, especially if I thought he was doing the right thing.”
It’s a legal gray area, according to American think tank Brookings, which said there is no statute detailing whether a president can remove a fed chair and no president has tried, so there hasn’t yet been a legal test. Though Trump said he won’t fire Powell and will let him serve the remainder of his term, he has also expressed the belief that the president “should have at least say” in determining interest rates—despite the Federal Reserve’s long history of operating separately from the federal government.
Federal Reserve Pauses Interest Rate Cuts—First Meeting Without A Cut Since July (Forbes)
Can Trump Fire Jerome Powell? Fed Chairman Says He Won’t Resign If Trump Asks (Forbes)
Jerome Powell Says He’s ‘Not Concerned’ About Federal Reserve Independence Under Trump (Forbes)