President Donald Trump erupted over his hand-picked Federal Reserve chair bucking his advice to slash interest rates.
Trump, 80, made clear his displeasure over the central bank’s choice on Wednesday to hike interest rates for the first time since 2023 in an effort to curb rising inflation.
“Interest Rates in the United States should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World — BY FAR,” the president wrote on Truth Social two and a half hours after the decision. “Our Country is BOOMING with new Investment!”
“If we stopped Trading with every country that we have a Deficit with, which is most of them, we would make, at least, 1.5 Trillion Dollars a year,” he continued. “The word ‘Deficit’ is nothing more than a fancy word for LOSS. We are ‘carrying’ almost every country in the World, and that cannot go on any longer.”
Trump capped off his post with an all-caps command: “LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST!”
Kevin Warsh, whom Trump personally nominated to replace Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve chair, confirmed the bank’s decision in a press briefing Wednesday afternoon to raise the rate by a quarter of a percentage point to between 3.75 percent and 4 percent.
The president was eager to be rid of Powell, whom he had nominated to chair the board during his first administration, over his refusal to cut interest rates at Trump’s whim.
Trump chose Warsh, a longtime ally, in January to lead the Fed, and he was sworn in in May.
During the briefing, he addressed Trump’s previous threat earlier this month to cut off trade with certain countries unless interest rates were reduced, maintaining that the central bank came to its conclusions independently.
“Part of the independence of the Federal Reserve is we stay in our lane. Independence is a two-way street,” Warsh, 56, explained. “We let people that do trade policy and fiscal policy stay in their lane, too. That’s how we can stand up here and call them the way we see them.”
He also said that he didn’t “have anything” regarding “discussions with the president.”
However, Trump told reporters later in the evening that he wasn’t upset with Warsh personally over the Fed’s decision, instead shifting the blame to his “hostile board.”
One reporter informed Trump that Warsh himself had “said it was the right decision and responsible decision for these interest hikes,” to which the president said he didn’t know what Warsh was referring to.
“I talked to Kevin and I said you might as well vote with the board because it’s not going to matter,” he said, according to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “The board is very hostile. They’re very political. They’re doing the wrong thing.”
“I said, ‘Do what you want because it doesn’t matter’ because he doesn’t have the votes,” he added, calling Warsh a “good man.”
