Jerome Powell had a succinct answer when asked Thursday if he’d step down as the Federal Reserve’s chairman if Donald Trump asked him to: “No.”
Asked by a Politico reporter if he’d expand on his reasoning, a very-serious-looking Powell repeated, “No.”
Powell’s defiance—just two days after Trump’s landslide election win—is sure to peeve the president-elect, who does not have the power to fire or demote Powell even once he’s back in the Oval Office in January.
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“Not permitted under the law,” Powell explained bluntly, reminding reporters that Trump has no outright authority over him and his decision-making.
Powell was speaking at a news conference he called to announce the Fed had cut interest rates by a quarter point—a measure he said came in response to the steady decline of inflation in recent months.
Powell, 71, has led the federal reserve since 2018, a year after Trump appointed him to the position. Joe Biden reappointed Powell, a Republican ex-private equity executive, in 2022 for another four-year term at the helm of the central bank.
Powell and Trump had a contentious relationship in the second half of Trump’s first term, with the then-president publicly complaining that Powell was not easing monetary policy quickly enough.
Trump even attempted to remove Powell from his role in 2020—using COVID-19 chaos as cover—but was unsuccessful. They more recently clashed in September, when Trump accused Powell of possibly “playing politics” with the timing of Powell’s announcement of a historic cut to its key interest rate by 0.5 percent.
Trump, 78, recently acknowledged he won’t be able to order Powell around. He opined at an event last month, however, that he should be allowed to wield some influence over the chairman’s decision making.
“I don’t think I should be allowed to order it, but I think I have the right to put in comments as to whether the interest rates should go up or down,” Trump said in front of the Economic Club of Chicago on Oct. 15.
At that same event, Trump claimed that Powell has one of the easiest gigs in the federal government.
“You show up to the office once a month and you say, ‘Let’s flip a coin,’ and everybody talks about you like you’re a God,” Trump said of Powell’s position.
Trump harped about inflation throughout his presidential campaign, with polls suggesting it was a key concern among voters, particularly the cost of gas and groceries. Even prior to the campaign’s home stretch, however, annual inflation had already plummeted to just 2.4 percent by September—significantly less than the 9.1 percent peak that came in the summer of 2022.
Powell was asked about Trump’s policy goals on Thursday, including the incoming president’s obsession with implementing sweeping tariffs and cutting taxes. Powell didn’t address the specific policies and instead insisted that the Fed would not act on hypothetical policies before the man ushering them in had taken office. He added that the election would have “no effects” on interest rate decisions.
“It’s such an early stage,” Powell said. “We don’t know what the policies are, and once we know what they are, we won’t have a sense of when they’ll be implemented.”
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