President Donald Trump said Wednesday he would “love to fire” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, whom he has long criticized for what he sees as a failure to cut interest rates fast enough.
Trump blasted Powell, without mentioning his name, at the U.S.-Saudi Arabia Investment Forum in Washington on Wednesday, telling Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that Powell “needs to work on” him.
“Mortgage rates are down despite the Fed. I mean, Scott, you got to work on this guy. He’s got some real mental problems. No, he has something wrong with him,” Trump said.
“I’ll be honest, I’d love to fire his ass. He should be fired. Guy’s grossly incompetent,” he added.
The Federal Reserve cut rates by a quarter percent or 25 basis points in September and October, after months of pressure from Trump, who nicknamed Powell “Too Late” earlier this year. As Breitbart News Economics Editor John Carney noted, the Federal Reserve was misled by its fear of the Trump tariffs, citing a historical study from the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank:
A typical large tariff hike—roughly a four percentage-point rise in the average tariff rate—shows up in the pre-World War II historical record as associated with about two percentage points less inflation and one percentage point more unemployment. The authors of the paper admit that they do not know exactly how this works but note that it is akin to what you would expect from a decline in demand.
That is the opposite of what the Federal Reserve told itself about tariffs in 2025.
To understand how consequential this misreading is, start with a simple principle: when policymakers get the sign of an economic shock wrong, when they mistake its direction, they naturally respond in the wrong direction too.
Trump also blasted Powell for cost overruns at the Fed, as he did when he was on Powell’s turf touring construction over the summer. He said Wednesday Powell should be sued for the overruns. Trump said in July that the project, which initially had an estimated price tag of $1.9 billion in 2021 according to Fortune, ballooned to $3.1 billion, and on Wednesday, he put the cost at $4 billion.
“I’m building a ballroom that’s going to cost a tiny fraction of that, and it’s bigger than the whole thing put together,” he added.
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