United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has reportedly been trying to calm President Donald Trump's rage at Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell due to the negative impacts it could have on the economy.
Politico reports that Bessent has "repeatedly cautioned" Trump against his desire to fire Powell, as doing so would likely set off panic in the global stock markets and further damage the American economy that has already been reeling from the president's trade disputes with nearly every country on the planet.
"Any attempt to remove Powell — a legally questionable option Trump considered in his first term — would feed instability in markets already woozy from the recent tariff whiplash," Politico writes. "Investor confidence that the central bank will make decisions based on the path of the economy rather than on short-term politics is a key underpinning of the U.S.’s global financial reputation."
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Trump has been pushing Powell to aggressively cut interest rates as the economy is showing signs of major weakness, but Powell on Wednesday indicated that he has no plans for rate cuts in the immediate future.
What's more, Powell signaled that he was waiting to see how Trump's global trade war would affect the American economy, as he noted the tariffs implemented by the president are even larger than the ones passed nearly a century ago that economists blame for fully sinking the United States into an economic depression.
Powell's term is not set to expire until next year and Trump on Thursday indicated that he is very anxious to see him depart, despite the fact that Trump nominated Powell for this very job during his first term in office.