WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday he is not planning to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell even as he unleashed a fresh round of criticism against the central bank chief for not lowering interest rates and declined to completely reject the possibility of ousting him.
A Bloomberg report earlier Wednesday that the president is likely to fire Powell soon sparked a drop in stocks and the dollar, and a rise in Treasury yields.
Trump, who criticizes Powell on an almost daily basis for being “TOO LATE” to cut interest rates, said the report wasn’t true, but confirmed he had floated the idea with Republican lawmakers on Tuesday evening, marking the latest chapter in an escalating campaign of pressure by Trump against the independent central bank and its embattled chief.
“I don’t rule out anything, but I think it’s highly unlikely unless he has to leave for fraud,” Trump said, a reference to recent White House and Republican lawmaker criticism of cost overruns in the $2.5 billion renovation of the Fed’s historic headquarters in Washington. There has been no evidence of fraud, and the Fed has pushed back on criticism of its handling of the project.
Treasury yields pared declines and stocks ended the day up after Trump’s comments, which also included the familiar complaint that Powell is a “terrible” chair for keeping the Fed’s short-term policy rate in the 4.25%-4.50% range since December while the central bank assesses the impact of sharply higher tariffs on inflation.
Trump blames the Fed for higher long-term rates that increase the cost of U.S. government borrowing, and his attacks on Powell have continued since his July 4 signing the “Big Beautiful Bill” tax and spending bill that independent analysts say will add trillions of dollars to the U.S. deficit.
Meanwhile, Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who opposed that bill and has since said he won’t run for reelection, delivered a spirited defense of an independent Fed, which economists say is the linchpin of U.S. financial and price stability.
‘HUGE MISTAKE’
“There’s been some talk about potentially firing the Fed chair,” said Tillis, a member of the Senate Banking Committee that oversees the Fed and confirms presidential nominations to its Board. Subjecting the Fed to direct presidential control would be a “huge mistake,” he said.
“The consequences of firing a Fed Chair, just because political people don’t agree with that economic decision, will be to undermine the credibility of the United States going forward and I would argue if it happens you are going to see a pretty immediate response, and we’ve got to avoid that,” said Tillis.
Asked if it would be a problem for Trump to fire Powell, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters: “My understanding is he doesn’t have any intention of doing that.”
“President Trump’s own analysis and that of his Treasury Secretary is that he cannot fire Jay Powell,” House Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill told CNBC earlier on Wednesday.
Powell, who was nominated by Trump in late 2017 to lead the Fed and then nominated for a second term by Democratic President Joe Biden four years later, has repeatedly said he intends to serve out his term that goes through May 15, 2026. A recent Supreme Court opinion has solidified a long-standing interpretation of the law that the Fed chair cannot be fired over policy differences but only “for cause.”
RENOVATIONS AT THE FED
Last week, the White House appeared to try to lay the groundwork for that when the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, sent Powell a letter saying Trump was “extremely troubled” by the renovations of two Fed buildings.
Powell responded by asking the U.S. central bank’s inspector general to review the project, and the central bank posted a ‘frequently asked questions’ factsheet, which rebutted some of Vought’s assertions about VIP dining rooms and elevators that he said added to the costs.
“Nobody is fooled by President Trump and Republicans’ sudden interest in building renovations — it’s clear pretext to fire Fed Chair Powell,” Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee and herself a longtime critic of Powell, posted on X. Warren was the committee’s only member to vote against Powell’s renomination to chair in 2022.
Fed policymakers are worried that, with 40-year-high inflation only recently in the rear-view mirror, any bump up in inflation coupled with a too-early cut to short-term borrowing costs could ignite expectations that inflation is back, a potentially self-fulfilling prophecy that could weaken the economy and undermine progress on price stability.
Analysts said they feared the pressure campaign on Powell would continue — with deleterious effects on the Fed’s ability to do its congressionally mandated job of keeping prices stable and to maximize employment.
“Any reduction in the independence of the Fed would likely add upside risks to an inflation outlook that is already subject to upward pressures from tariffs and somewhat elevated inflation expectations,” wrote JP Morgan chief US economist Michael Feroli, who said he doubts the “saga” of the president’s repeated threats to remove Powell is over with.
He and others noted that continued pressure on Powell would likely push up longer-term interest rates as investors demand more protection from the risk of higher inflation — making US government borrowing more, not less, expensive.
The “formal process” for identifying a successor to Powell is under way, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said. Bessent is one candidate for the job, along with White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett, former Fed governor Kevin Warsh, and Fed Governor Christopher Waller.
(Reporting by Ryan Patrick Jones in Toronto, David Morgan, Trevor Hunnicutt and Andrea Shalal in Washington; writing by Ann Saphir; editing by Rami Ayyub and Nick Zieminski)
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