President Trump ramped up his criticism of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and suggested appointing himself to the central bank.
“Maybe I should go to the Fed,” Trump mused at the White House on Wednesday, hours before the central bank was set to announce its latest interest rate move.
“Am I allowed to appointment myself at the Fed?” he continued. “I’d do a much better job than these people.”
With less than a year left in Powell’s term as Fed chair, most experts don’t expect Trump to make a run at his job and risk upsetting markets. But Trump has repeatedly suggested removing Powell, and his campaign reportedly considered a plan to give the president more authority over Fed rate decisions despite the bank’s legal separation from White House policymaking.
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the panel of Fed officials responsible for setting interest rates, is expected to keep its baseline interest rate unchanged Wednesday.
While Powell is the de facto leader of the FOMC as chair of the Fed board, he is but one of more than a dozen central bank officials who vote on the bank’s interest rate moves.
Even so, Trump has raged at Powell for more than seven years after the president elevated him to lead the Fed in 2017.
Trump has repeatedly threatened Powell’s job and criticized his handling of the economy, accusing the lifelong Republican of rigging interest rates to support Democrats and oppose the president’s economic policies.
During his second term, Trump dubbed Powell “Mr. Too-Late,” accusing the Fed of raising rates too slowly amid the postpandemic inflation spike and cutting them too slowly after Trump took office.
“I would have never reappointed him. Biden reappointed him. I don’t know why that is. But I guess maybe he was a Democrat,” Trump said Wednesday of Powell, a Republican who worked in former President George H.W. Bush’s administration and has faced fierce backlash from the left throughout his Fed tenure.
“You know, I got great advice from Mnuchin on this one,” he said of former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who was the driving force behind Powell’s nomination.
Fed officials kicked off the year expecting to continue cutting interest rates as inflation drifted back toward its ideal annual level of 2 percent. But the bank has held off through the first half of 2025 amid the uncertainty driven by Trump’s tariff plans.
“The labor market is solid, inflation is low. We can afford to be patient as things unfold. There’s no real cost to our waiting at this point,” Powell told reporters last month after the Fed kept rates steady following its two-day policy meeting.
“There’s a great deal of uncertainty about … where tariff policies are going to settle out and also, when they do settle out, what will be the implications for the economy, for growth and for employment,” he added.
Brett Samuels contributed.
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