Trump Rages at Jerome Powell After Fed Chair Defies Demands and Shoots Down Trump’s Pressure Campaign

President Donald Trump raged at Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell after he defied the president’s demands to lower interest rates and blew off his relentless pressure campaign.

Trump has repeatedly attacked Powell for weeks, invoking his “termination” less than 24 hours after Powell’s remarks on the worsening impact of Trump’s tariff policies and constantly pressuring him to lower interest rates.

But Powell announced there would be no rate cut after a Federal Open Market Committee meeting Wednesday.

Trump greeted the news by again attacking Powell in a Truth Social post Thursday morning. Trump wrote:

“Too Late” Jerome Powell is a FOOL, who doesn’t have a clue. Other than that, I like him very much! Oil and Energy way down, almost all costs (groceries and “eggs”) down, virtually NO INFLATION, Tariff Money Pouring Into the U.S. — THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF “TOO LATE!” ENJOY!

At a press conference following the meeting, Powell gave another grim assessment of the effects of Trump’s tariff policies, and shot down the idea that Trump’s demands had any effect when he was directly asked about the pressure:

FED CHAIR JEROME POWELL: What looks likely, given the scope and scale of the tariffs, is that we will see—certainly the risks to higher inflation, higher unemployment have increased.

And if that’s what we do see, and if the tariffs are ultimately put in place at those levels, which we don’t know, then we will see– we won’t see further progress toward our goals. We might see a delay in that.

I think in the-you know, in our thinking, we would get– we would never-we never do anything but keep achieving those goals.

But we would, at least for the next, let’s say, year, we would not be making progress toward those goals, again, if that’s the way the tariffs shake out.

The thing is, we don’t know that. There’s so much uncertainty about the scale, scope, timing, and persistence of the tariffs.

…

REPORTER: How does President Trump calling on you personally, as well as the Federal Reserve, to make rate cuts affect your decision today and affect your job difficulty?

FED CHAIR JEROME POWELL: Doesn’t affect our doing our job at all.

So we’re always gonna do the same thing, which is we’re going to use our tools to foster maximum employment and price stability for the benefit of the American people.

We’re always going to consider only the economic data, the outlook, the balance of risks, and that’s it. That’s all we’re gonna consider.

So it really doesn’t effect either our job or the way we do it.

Watch above via CNBC.