US President-elect Donald Trump will not attempt to remove Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell after taking office in January 2025, acting as the central bank. He made the announcement in an interview with NBC television, the first formal interview since the November presidential election. TASR reports on this based on Reuters, AFP and Bloomberg reports.
Trump was going to replace Powell because of disagreements over interest rates
“No, I don’t think so,” Trump said in an interview with NBC News that aired Sunday, when asked by host Kristen Welker if he would try to replace Powell, given his past disagreements with him over interest rates.
Powell said last month that he would refuse to leave office before the end of his term if Trump tried to oust him. And he is prepared to defend the Fed’s independence from political pressure, insisting that the incoming president does not have the power to fire him or other central bank chiefs before their terms end.
Trump appointed Powell as Fed chair in early 2018 to replace Janet Yellen, who later became Treasury secretary in President Joe Biden’s administration. President Biden appointed Powell again as head of the Fed after the end of his first term.
But the relationship between Trump and Powell has soured, with Trump often attacking the Fed and its chief over the central bank’s policy decisions during his first term. Trump’s attacks on the Fed “break” with decades of practice in which presidents have avoided direct criticism of the central bank, which operates with legal independence and is subject to congressional oversight.
However, even before the election, in October, in an interview with Bloomberg News, Trump said that, in his opinion, the president has “the right to say whether interest rates should go up or down.”
In an interview with NBC, Trump also admitted that he cannot guarantee that US consumer prices will not rise if he imposes tariffs on imports. The cost of living was the main topic of the November presidential elections.
