(Reuters) – American president Donald Trump said Thursday that the termination of the president of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell “could not come quickly enough”, while asking the American central bank to reduce interest rates.
Trump, in an article on his social media platform Truth Social, reiterated his position on rate reductions, claiming that Powell “should have reduced interest rates, such as (European Central Bank), but he should certainly lower them now.”
The Fed reference interest rate is currently 4.25% to 4.50%, where it has been the case since December after several rate drops at the end of last year.
Trump's comments occur a day after Powell said at an event at the Chicago Economic Club that “Fed’s independence is widely understood and supported in Washington and Congress where it really matters.”
Trump in his article said Powell was “still too late and badly”, and criticized the speech that Powell delivered on Wednesday, calling him “another complete and typical mess!”
Powell, who spoke on Wednesday for the first time since Trump interrupted certain prices, also characterized the volatility of the market in the past few weeks as a logical treatment of dramatic changes from the Trump administration in trade policy – not a sign of stress that justified a response from the Fed.
Powell warned Trump's pricing policies was likely to push inflation and employment further from the central bank objectives and said the Fed was “well placed to wait for greater clarity”.
(Report by Angela Christy and Gursimran Kaur in Bengaluru; edition by Chizu Nomiyama)
