Trump Attacks Federal Reserve Over Interest Rate Hikes

In an extraordinarily rare move by a sitting president, Donald Trump criticized the Federal Reserve Thursday for raising interest rates and expressed his fear that it would jeopardize economic growth, according to CNBC. In response to a growing economy and substantive stock market gains under Trump, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates twice in the last year, and had indicated that they will do so twice more. “I’m not thrilled,” Trump told CNBC’s Joe Kernen during a taped interview. “Because we go up and every time you go up they want to raise rates again. I don’t really—I am not happy about it. But at the same time I’m letting them do what they feel is best.” As CNBC notes, it is “historically rare” for a sitting president to criticize the Federal Reserve, which is intentionally independent from the president’s jurisdiction. Trump appeared unperturbed by this break from tradition, noting that “I’m just saying the same thing that I would have said as a private citizen. So somebody would say, ‘Oh, maybe you shouldn’t say that as president.’ I couldn’t care less what they say, because my views haven’t changed.” Others disagree, however. The former president of the Dallas fed told CNBC that “One of the hallmarks of our great American economy is preserving the independence of the Federal Reserve. No president should interfere...Were I Chairman Powell, I would ignore the President and do my job and I am confident he will do just that.”