President Trump is trying to make Jerome Powell’s “life as miserable as possible” as he ramps up pressure on the Federal Reserve chair to lower interest rates or leave the central bank, a reporter who has closely followed Trump asserted this week.
“I’m skeptical he will fire Powell — he might; obviously, anything is possible,” New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said on CNN’s “The Source” late Thursday. “But in the meantime, he is going to make his life as miserable as possible, or at least as miserable as the president perceives it could be, behaving this way.”
Trump told reporters Friday morning that he does not plan to fire Powell but again criticized him for not adjusting interest rates.
“I think he’s doing a terrible job,” Trump said before departing the White House for a trip to flood-ravaged Texas. “I think we should be 3 points lower, interest rates. He’s costing our country a lot of money.”
“We should be No. 1, and we’re not, and that’s because of Jerome Powell,” Trump added.
Haberman said on CNN that she has heard names floated as a possible replacement for Powell.
“Always worth reminding people … the president appointed Jay Powell,” she said. “This was not somebody who was imposed upon him. This was an appointee of his, previously.”
The Supreme Court ruled in May that the Federal Reserve chair is protected from removal without cause.
Top White House officials have since escalated attacks on Powell, focusing on the central bank’s $2.5 billion office renovation and questioning his management.
Trump’s chief budget adviser Russell Vought publicly shared a letter Thursday that he penned to Powell implying that changes to the ongoing renovation of the 90-year-old Marriner S. Eccles Building, which serves as the Federal Reserve System headquarters in Washington, D.C., may violate the law.
“The Fed has been mismanaged,” Vought told reporters at the White House on Friday, calling the building renovations “horrifying from a cost perspective.”
Powell told senators in June that some of the elements that the National Capital Planning Commission approved in 2021 have been altered or have been mischaracterized in recent reports.
“There’s no VIP dining room; there’s no new marble — we took down the old marble, and we’re putting it back up,” Powell testified, acknowledging that some segments of new marble were needed only to replace broken pieces.
“There are no new water features; there’s no beehives, and there’s no roof terrace gardens,” Powell continued.
Vought on Friday compared the renovation work to France’s extravagant Palace of Versailles.
“It probably would qualify as one of the eight wonders of the ancient world if you were able to go back that far,” he told reporters.
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