President Donald Trump dropped a lengthy rant against FED Chairman Jerome Powell on Thursday while signing resolutions to end California’s EV mandates. Trump hammered Powell for refusing to lower interest rates, and joked about firing him — which he said he won’t do. Powell has definitely promised to remain at his post through the end of his term, whether or not Trump tries to remove him.
Trump spoke about the economy and boasted of low monthly inflation for the month of May.
“Because we have inflation under control perfectly. You probably saw the records. Everyone’s on television saying, ‘What’s going on here? Trump has proven to be right.’ You know, all of these things. We’ve taken it. Eighty-eight billion in tariffs in two months. Eighty-eight billion with no inflation,” Trump began.
Notably, Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s, called the May numbers “a very good report,” but warned, “I think it’s the calm before the inflation storm. This [report] still reflects the disinflation that began a few years ago and continued on through the month of May.”
“And if we’re smart, there won’t be. Now, we’d like to get this guy to lower interest rates because, you know, if he doesn’t, we have to pay. We have a lot of short-term debt. Obama gave it to us originally, and Biden carried it on,” Trump continued,
They like short-term. I like long-term, cheap debt. But a lot of the debt comes through, because Biden, that’s what — oh, he didn’t do it. I’m sure he didn’t know anything about it. But somebody approved short-term debt. It’s all over the place. And it comes through starting very soon. And if we would lower the interest rates by one point, we’d pay about one point less. That’s $300 billion dollars a year, can you believe it?One point. If he’d lower it by two points, we’d pay $600 billion a year. That’s for years, 10 years, 12 years, whatever we make it.But we can’t get this guy to do it. And the fake news is saying, ‘Oh, if you fired him, it would be so bad. It would be bad.’ I don’t know why it would be so bad, but I’m not going to fire him. I just want him to — you know, we call him ‘Too Late,’ right? ‘Too Late’ is his nickname, like ‘Too Tall Jones.’ He was Too Tall, T-O-O. And I just say this because we want to get rid of inflation, and we have.But we’re going to be paying more for debt. All he has to
do is lower it. Europe’s done 10 lowerings. We’ve done none. And nobody understands it. Actually, today, when the numbers came out, they were so good. You saw yesterday’s numbers. Incredible. No inflation.
After an applause, Trump continued and offered praise to some of his boosters in the media. “Today just came out, same thing, no inflation, they’re all shocked. All these guys are watching from business, CNBC, and all of these different networks. Maria Bartiromo actually got it right. She’s been getting it right for a long time, that one. I hope she’s appreciated. And Joe Kernen has been very good at CNBC, I must tell you, but other people aren’t so good,” he said before taking another swipe at Powell:
But I will say that they are just — they can’t believe what’s happening. Because we can discuss, oh, we got a lot of press, we got lot of cameras rolling right now. Not that I like doing it, because I don’t. But if we take, if we cut our interest by one point, for years, we save 300 billion. If we cut it by two points, we save, because it’s pretty equivalent.We’re gonna save, we’re gonna spend 600 billion a year, 600 billion, because of one numbskull that sits here. I don’t see enough reason to cut the rates
now. And the problem he’s got is that, and I explained to him, look, if inflation went up, cut your rates now, there’s no inflation. We got it down. We got prices down. We got gasoline down. And you’ll keep it going down. But gasoline’s down.
Watch the clip above via C-SPAN.