\n<\/p>\n
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.<\/p>\n
For almost an entire year, Donald Trump has begged the Federal Reserve to slash interest rates and supercharge the American economy. And for almost an entire year, Fed Chair Jerome Powell has barely budged.<\/p>\n
Now, as the president prepares to appoint Powell\u2019s successor, amenability seems to be top of mind. \u201cI don\u2019t think he should do exactly what we say,\u201d Trump told The Wall Street Journal today of the future chair. But \u201cI\u2019m a smart voice and should be listened to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump himself appointed Powell to the chairmanship during his first term, but their relationship has since soured. The president\u2019s nickname for him is \u201cToo Late,\u201d referencing Powell\u2019s reluctance to lower interest rates as quickly and as dramatically as Trump would like. He has also called Powell a \u201cmoron\u201d and a \u201cnumbskull.\u201d Tensions peaked in July when, during a visit to one of the Fed buildings currently under renovation, Powell fact-checked some of Trump\u2019s claims directly to his face. This week, Trump called Powell a \u201cbad head of the Fed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since he first took office, Trump has applied pressure on the Fed via the bully pulpit of social media. But during his second term, Trump has tried to exert influence over the country\u2019s central bank\u2014long considered independent from the machinations of Congress and the White House\u2014by other means. His attempt this past summer to fire one of the Fed\u2019s governors, Lisa Cook, defied precedent (although it has been held up in the courts for now). He has also installed Stephen Miran, a Trump ally who served elsewhere in the administration, to the Fed\u2019s board. At both of the meetings he attended, Miran pushed for a more extreme rate cut than the other governors.<\/p>\n
This week, when the bank cut rates by another 0.25 percent, it did so under a cloud of speculation about who the next Fed chair might be. Powell\u2019s second term as chair will be up in May, and although interviews for a successor are ongoing, Trump has signaled that he\u2019s already made his choice. Kevin Hassett, who leads the National Economic Council and who has been broadly supportive of Trump\u2019s push to decrease interest rates, is widely considered the front-runner. Although Hassett has emphasized his \u201cfirm commitment to not being partisan,\u201d his penchant for reduced borrowing costs happens to align exactly with Trump\u2019s. Today, the president confirmed to the Journal that Hassett is at the top of his list, along with Kevin Warsh, who previously served as a Fed governor during the George W. Bush and Obama administrations.<\/p>\n
In his second term, Trump has sought to consolidate his influence across federal agencies.\u00a0 Along the way, many of the traditional checks to executive power have been eroded. Trump\u2019s pick for director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, has used the position to \u201cinflict pain on the Democrats,\u201d as my colleagues Toluse Olorunnipa and Jonathan Lemire put it: Vought has focused his federal spending cuts on programs spearheaded by the Biden administration. At the Department of Justice, the president has fired dissenters and attempted to install loyalists such as Lindsey Halligan and Alina Habba, both of whom were once on Trump\u2019s legal team. For the Fed historian Peter Conti-Brown, Trump\u2019s attempts to pressure the central bank are less about any particular economic strategy and more about the same desire for control that inflected these other moves. \u201cI don\u2019t know that Donald Trump thinks about policy or thinks about the Fed,\u201d he told me. \u201cI think he thinks about power.\u201d<\/p>\n
The results of direct presidential influence on the Fed could be catastrophic. The central bank, which controls the supply of money in the United States, is oriented toward what Conti-Brown described as the \u201cmedium term.\u201d It is not meant to be an immediate lever for economic growth, as the president seems to see it. Lowering borrowing costs in service of partisan interests without respecting the broader macroeconomic picture, Conti-Brown said, could lead to \u201cthe collapse of the currency, hyperinflation, and devastation for all participants in the economy.\u201d It could also give the president yet another avenue to reward his friends and punish his enemies: As my colleague Rog\u00e9 Karma wrote recently, the Fed is the \u201ccentral node of the U.S. financial system.\u201d American banks and those who use them all ultimately feel the effects of the Fed\u2019s judgments.<\/p>\n
The Fed\u2019s operations have never been entirely disentangled from politics. Sarah Binder, a professor of political science at George Washington University, told me that the central bank needs political support from the administration and from Congress in order to do its job: making tough choices that are sometimes unpopular in the near term but that ultimately ensure the stability of the economy. \u201cEven just raising the issue, trying to fire Cook, going and challenging all this in the courts\u2014that\u2019s not great for this perception that the Fed can work independently,\u201d Binder explained. Public distrust could make it harder for the Fed to perform its essential functions.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s Trump\u2019s own political situation. Approval ratings for his management of the economy are dismal. This week, the president began an \u201caffordability tour\u201d to convince Americans that things aren\u2019t really as bad as they feel; during the first stop (at a luxury resort), he mocked the word affordability and took a detour into ranting about Somalia. The Republican Party\u2019s success during next year\u2019s midterms could hinge on whether Trump can somehow lower prices on consumer goods, yet the president has not provided a coherent solution.<\/p>\n
The Fed exists outside of these factors. After all, it\u2019s not the agency\u2019s job to lower the cost of beef and eggs. Its role is much larger, and touches nearly all aspects of American life\u2014which is exactly what makes the president\u2019s campaign to sway the agency so dangerous.<\/p>\n
Related:<\/p>\n
Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:<\/strong><\/p>\n Today\u2019s News<\/strong><\/p>\n Dispatches <\/strong><\/p>\n Explore all of our newsletters here.<\/em><\/p>\n Evening Read<\/strong><\/p>\n Illustration by Alicia Tatone. Sources: Jeff Boan \/ AP; Jeff Chiu \/ AP; Rich Pilling; Getty.<\/p>\n What Do You Think of Barry Bonds Now?<\/p>\n By Jeremy Collins<\/p>\n Today is Barry Bonds Bobblehead Day. The first 20,000 fans in attendance will take home a tiny Bonds with a nodding oversize dome. On the Jumbotron, we\u2019re watching a video of Bonds in which the Giants broadcaster Duane Kuiper narrates Barry Bonds highlights \u2026<\/p>\n It\u2019s startling to see such adulation for a player so long regarded as a villain. Throughout much of his career and his retirement, Bonds has been baseball\u2019s ultimate antihero\u2014because of the steroids he used to propel himself past Hank Aaron\u2019s home-run record, because he denied having knowingly used them, because of his churlishness and arrogance, because of the allegations of assault from his first wife and a former girlfriend.<\/p>\n Yet a new generation of fans now marvels at Bonds\u2019s achievements, and even older fans seem willing to privilege the memories of his otherworldly feats over those of his glaring flaws.<\/p>\n Read the full article.<\/p>\n More From The Atlantic<\/em><\/p>\n Culture Break<\/p>\n Claire Folger \/ 20th Century Studios \/ Everett Collection<\/p>\n Watch (or skip). Ella McCay (out now in theaters) is a throwback rom-com about a Millennial trying to have it all\u2014but it doesn\u2019t quite work, David Sims writes.<\/p>\n Listen. Spencer Kornhaber compiled a list of the 10 best albums of 2025.<\/p>\n Play our daily crossword.<\/p>\n Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.<\/p>\n When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting <\/em>The Atlantic.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. For almost an entire year, Donald Trump has begged the Federal Reserve to slash interest rates and supercharge the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37181,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[1671,2222,3281,2421],"class_list":{"0":"post-37180","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-atlantic","9":"tag-drama","10":"tag-feds","11":"tag-succession"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37180","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=37180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n