Donald Trump has renewed his attacks on Jerome Powell, calling the US central bank chair a “numbskull” and accusing him of “making it difficult for people, especially the young, to buy a house”.
The US president accused Powell of preventing the Federal Reserve from lowering interest rates to make housing more affordable.
Recent figures have shown US house prices rising to all-time highs after a decline during the winter and early spring.
Powell, referred to as “Too Late” by the president on his own social media platform Truth Social, is expected to respond on Friday to calls by the White House for an inspection into renovation costs at the central bank’s headquarters in Washington.
Trump grabbed the opportunity to try to embarrass the Fed chief after it was revealed that a planned $1.9bn (£1.4bn) refurbishment was about $600m over budget.
Powell has been in post since 2018, after Trump nominated him to succeed Janet Yellen during his first term as president.
On Friday, Trump said it was “truly one of my worst appointments”, before heaping blame on Joe Biden. “Sleepy Joe saw how bad he was and reappointed him anyway – and the Fed board has done nothing to stop this ‘numbskull’ from hurting so many people. In many ways the board is equally to blame!” he wrote.
At its most recent meeting the Fed held interest rates at a level between 4.25% and 4.5%, with Powell citing the likely impact of the president’s import tariffs on inflation as one of the main reasons.
US inflation accelerated to 2.7% in June, up from 2.4% in May, according to the consumer price index, with business leaders blaming tariffs on imported goods for the increase in prices.
Trump has consistently attacked Powell and hinted that he could take the unprecedented decision to sack him, although the White House budget director, Russell Vought, said on Thursday that the president was unlikely to fire the Fed boss.
The supreme court recently suggested that the president could not fire the Fed chair.
Vought said the administration wanted to have an on-site inspection of the Fed’s troubled $2.5bn building renovations. “I think the president was pretty clear … he’s unlikely to fire the chair, but he has substantial concerns with regard to how he’s managed the Fed,” he said, indicating that Powell could see out his term of office, which ends next May.
Christopher Waller, one of seven governors on the Fed board, said he would accept the job of Fed chair if asked by Trump. His intervention, the first by one of Powell’s colleagues, came just hours after he joined the president in calling for a rate cut this month.
Waller said: “In 2019 the president contacted me and said: ‘Would you serve?’ And I said yes. If the president contacted me and said ‘I want you to serve’, I would do it. But he has not contacted me.”
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This month Trump took the unusual step of writing to Powell to tell him how weak he thought the central bank boss was when other central banks, notably the European Central Bank and the Bank of England, had cut interest rates. “You have cost the USA a fortune and continue to do so. You should lower the rate – by a lot!” Trump wrote to Powell.
In his latest social media post, he wrote: “‘Too Late’ and the Fed, are choking out the housing market with their high rate, making it difficult for people, especially the young, to buy a house.
“The USA is Rockin’, there is VERY LOW INFLATION, and we deserve to be at 1%, saving One Trillion Dollars a year on Interest Costs. I can’t tell you how dumb Too Late is – So bad for our Country!”
A meeting of finance ministers from the G20 gave Powell implicit backing by saying it was crucial to protect the independence of central banks.
The final communique on Friday after two days of meetings in Durban, South Africa, attended by the UK chancellor, Rachel Reeves, stressed the importance of central banks being allowed to achieve their mandates without political interference.
It said: “Central banks are strongly committed to ensuring price stability, consistent with their respective mandates, and will continue to adjust their policies in a data-dependent manner. Central bank independence is crucial to achieving this goal.”
The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, was missing from the event after a disagreement with Cyril Ramaphosa’s South Africa administration, which Trump has accused of failing to tackle the killing of white farmers – without providing evidence to support the claim.
