\n<\/p>\n
The US Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, pushed back hard against claims the central bank allows politics to drive decisions, in the midst of an extraordinary battle over its independence.<\/p>\n
Donald Trump, who is seeking to increase his administration\u2019s control over the Fed, has branded Powell \u201ca very political guy\u201d after he declined to bow to the president\u2019s public demands for drastically lower interest rates.<\/p>\n
The White House has launched an unprecedented campaign to overhaul the Fed\u2019s rate-setting board of governors, installing an administration official and trying to fire a Biden appointee over unconfirmed claims of mortgage fraud.<\/p>\n
But on Tuesday, Powell, who is typically diplomatic when speaking publicly, roundly dismissed one of the common allegations made by Trump and his allies: that the Fed is somehow political when making key decisions about the world\u2019s largest economy.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany people don\u2019t believe\u201d the Fed is simply allowing economic data to drive its decisions, Powell acknowledged at an event in Rhode Island. \u201cBut the truth is, mostly people who are calling us political, it\u2019s just a cheap shot.\u201d<\/p>\n
He did not mention Trump by name. But the president has become the most prominent critic of the Fed and Powell since returning to office.<\/p>\n
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Sign up to This Week in Trumpland<\/span><\/p>\n A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data 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 It comes a week after the central bank ordered its first rate cut since December, a move to stabilize a wobbling labor market, even as Trump\u2019s tariffs continue to push up prices.<\/p>\n \u201cNear-term risks to inflation are tilted to the upside and risks to employment to the downside \u2013 a challenging situation,\u201d Powell reiterated on Tuesday.<\/p>\n Stephen Miran, the Trump official now serving as a Fed governor, takes a different view. He dissented from every other policymaker on the central bank\u2019s board of governors last week to advocate for a deeper rate cut.<\/p>\n \u201cRelatively small changes in some good prices have led to what I view as unreasonable levels of concern,\u201d Miran argued in a speech earlier this week, claiming that tariffs would ultimately lead to \u201csubstantial swings in net national savings\u201d for the country.<\/p>\n Reuters contributed reporting<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The US Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, pushed back hard against claims the central bank allows politics to drive decisions, in the midst of an extraordinary battle over its independence. Donald Trump, who is seeking to increase his administration\u2019s control over the Fed, has branded Powell \u201ca very political guy\u201d after he declined to bow<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[7325,6948,5546,4437,319,4438,1913,4439,517,8041,71],"class_list":{"0":"post-23348","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-cheap","9":"tag-criticism","10":"tag-dismisses","11":"tag-fed","12":"tag-federal","13":"tag-jerome","14":"tag-political","15":"tag-powell","16":"tag-reserve","17":"tag-shot","18":"tag-trumps"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23348","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=23348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}