President Trump on Wednesday said he has a handful of people in mind to replace Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who has resisted Mr. Trump’s calls to lower interest rates.
“I know within three or four people who I’ll pick,” Mr. Trump told reporters during a press conference at NATO’s summit in The Hague. “I mean, he goes down pretty soon, fortunately, because I think he’s terrible.”
The president appoints a Fed chairman every four years but doesn’t have the authority to fire him or her. Mr. Powell’s term ends in May.
“We have no inflation,” Mr. Trump said, listing reasons for the Fed to cut rates. “We have a tremendous economy. Hundreds of billions of dollars of tariff money is pouring in. Factories are being built because they don’t want to pay the tariffs. So they’re building them all over the country — with close to $15 trillion, $5.1 trillion from the Middle East alone.”
Inflation in May was at an annual rate of 2.4%, a slight increase from April. The Fed’s target inflation rate is 2%.
The Fed decided last week to leave interest rates unchanged. Mr. Powell said the president’s tariffs create a highly uncertain” path for the U.S. economy, prompting the central bank to take a wait-and-see approach on possible rate cuts until later this year.
Mr. Trump, a longtime critic of the man he calls “Too Late,” said, “You raise the rate in two years from now or a year from now, but because the rate’s high, we have to pay more for debt.”
The Fed is an independent agency supposed to be free from direct political pressure, though that firewall appears to be eroding.
Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said on X that there is “momentum building” for Mr. Powell’s resignation, given the views of some Fed governors.
The president told Republican lawmakers on social media Tuesday to grill Mr. Powell when he appeared before a House panel to testify on the central bank’s monetary policy report.
“I hope Congress really works this very dumb, hardheaded person over. We will be paying for his incompetence for many years to come,” Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social.
• Tom Howell Jr. contributed to this story.
