\n<\/p>\n
Donald Trump has renewed his attacks on Jerome Powell, calling the US central bank chair a \u201cnumbskull\u201d and accusing him of \u201cmaking it difficult for people, especially the young, to buy a house\u201d.<\/p>\n
The US president accused Powell of preventing the Federal Reserve from lowering interest rates to make housing more affordable.<\/p>\n
Recent figures have shown US house prices rising to all-time highs after a decline during the winter and early spring.<\/p>\n
Powell, referred to as \u201cToo Late\u201d 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\u2019s headquarters in Washington.<\/p>\n
Trump grabbed the opportunity to try to embarrass the Fed chief after it was revealed that a planned $1.9bn (\u00a31.4bn) refurbishment was about $600m over budget.<\/p>\n
Powell has been in post since 2018, after Trump nominated him to succeed Janet Yellen during his first term as president.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Trump said it was \u201ctruly one of my worst appointments\u201d, before heaping blame on Joe Biden. \u201cSleepy Joe saw how bad he was and reappointed him anyway \u2013 and the Fed board has done nothing to stop this \u2018numbskull\u2019 from hurting so many people. In many ways the board is equally to blame!\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s import tariffs on inflation as one of the main reasons.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The supreme court recently suggested that the president could not fire the Fed chair.<\/p>\n
Vought said the administration wanted to have an on-site inspection of the Fed\u2019s troubled $2.5bn building renovations. \u201cI think the president was pretty clear \u2026 he\u2019s unlikely to fire the chair, but he has substantial concerns with regard to how he\u2019s managed the Fed,\u201d he said, indicating that Powell could see out his term of office, which ends next May.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s colleagues, came just hours after he joined the president in calling for a rate cut this month.<\/p>\n
Waller said: \u201cIn 2019 the president contacted me and said: \u2018Would you serve?\u2019 And I said yes. If the president contacted me and said \u2018I want you to serve\u2019, I would do it. But he has not contacted me.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Sign up to Business Today<\/span><\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n 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. \u201cYou have cost the USA a fortune and continue to do so. You should lower the rate \u2013 by a lot!\u201d Trump wrote to Powell.<\/p>\n In his latest social media post, he wrote: \u201c\u2018Too Late\u2019 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThe USA is Rockin\u2019, there is VERY LOW INFLATION, and we deserve to be at 1%, saving One Trillion Dollars a year on Interest Costs. I can\u2019t tell you how dumb Too Late is \u2013 So bad for our Country!\u201d<\/p>\n A meeting of finance ministers from the G20 gave Powell implicit backing by saying it was crucial to protect the independence of central banks.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n It said: \u201cCentral 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.\u201d<\/p>\n The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, was missing from the event after a disagreement with Cyril Ramaphosa\u2019s South Africa administration, which Trump has accused of failing to tackle the killing of white farmers \u2013 without providing evidence to support the claim.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Donald Trump has renewed his attacks on Jerome Powell, calling the US central bank chair a \u201cnumbskull\u201d and accusing him of \u201cmaking it difficult for people, especially the young, to buy a house\u201d. The US president accused Powell of preventing the Federal Reserve from lowering interest rates to make housing more affordable. Recent figures have<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[2179,680,2431,4722,4437,319,671,4721,364,517,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-11370","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-buy","9":"tag-calls","10":"tag-chair","11":"tag-difficult","12":"tag-fed","13":"tag-federal","14":"tag-house","15":"tag-numbskull","16":"tag-people","17":"tag-reserve","18":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}