If Trump Keeps Intimidating the Fed, He Will Pay a Price
Wise politicians have long appreciated the benefits of a central bank insulated from political pressure. They have understood that the Fed's independence allows them to carp and caterwaul about its decisions without impeding its decision making. They can insist that they would like to deliver faster growth, if only the Fed would let them.
The question hanging over the economy is whether Mr. Trump understands that doing anything more than complaining would be counterproductive.
The president is certainly getting his nickel's worth at the complaint window. Mr. Trump and his allies have repeatedly attacked the Fed and its chairman, Jerome Powell, for failing to deliver lower interest rates. They have engaged in vicious attacks on Mr. Powell's character, including absurd allegations of fraud in the renovation of the Fed's main campus.
The work is over budget and behind schedule, which is both a problem and a typical situation for government construction projects. There is no evidence of fraud. But on Thursday, to highlight the allegations of misconduct, Mr. Trump visited the central bank's headquarters, joining a scheduled tour of the renovations and engaging in an awkward exchange with Mr. Powell as both men stood before the cameras wearing hard hats. After the tour, Mr. Trump stood in front of the Fed and told reporters that 'we have to get interest rates lowered in our country.' He said he had made the same point to Mr. Powell directly. And he added, falsely, that the United States was not experiencing any inflation.
The subtext of Mr. Trump's visit to the Fed, the first by a president in two decades, is that some of his aides are pressing him to use the renovations as a legal pretext to remove the Fed chairman if Mr. Powell continues to resist Mr. Trump's wishes. This month Mr. Trump showed congressional Republicans the draft of a letter firing Mr. Powell, though the president insisted afterward that he had no intention of removing the Fed chairman before the end of his term in May 2026. Mr. Trump chose Mr. Powell for the job in 2017.
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