One day after Federal Reserve Jerome Powell again refused to lower interest rates in response to an unsteady economic outlook, President Donald Trump issued his most direct threat yet on the embattled chairman’s future.
Powell, who has for years been a thorn in the side of Trump as he sought to nudge decisions on the future of America’s monetary policy, once more bucked the president’s call to forge ahead with lower rates, prompting Trump to sternly rebuke him and warn that he may soon be out of a job if things don’t change.
While the European Central Bank is expected to lower rates for the seventh time in recent months, “‘Too Late’ Jerome Powell… who is always TOO LATE AND WRONG, yesterday issued a report which was another, and typical, complete ‘mess!’” Trump wrote early Thursday morning.
The Fed chair has urged patience while the nation’s central bank weighs next steps. At a conference on Wednesday, Powell warned that the administration’s tariff policies have created a “challenging scenario” for economists to predict where the U.S. economy will head over the next quarter.
Part of Powell’s speech conveyed that the Fed has wide latitude to be patient with its interest