President Donald Trump claimed Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell was resisting his call to lower interest rates for personal reasons.
U.S. stocks opened flat Wednesday ahead of the central bank's rate decision announcement Wednesday afternoon, and the president suggested during a press event on the White House lawn that Powell would not cut rates because he has a personal grudge against him.
"By the way, if he's worried about inflation, that's okay, I understand that," Trump told reporters. "I don't think there's going to be any. So far there hasn't, I mean, we have almost no inflation, we've done a great job. We had, when I came in we had a lot of inflation. We went through four years of the highest inflation in the history of our country with 'sleepy' Joe Biden and 'sleepy Joe,' and he didn't know what the hell he was doing, and so we had the highest inflation we've ever had in the history of our country, and then it came down because, when I got elected, it started dropping because people understood that I knew what I was doing."
Trump actually nominated Powell to lead the Federal Reserve System's board of governors in 2018, and his second term as chair expires next year, but the president speculated that he's resisting pressure to cut rates out of personal animus.
"Now we have a man that just refuses to lower the Fed rate, just refuses to do it, and he's not a smart person," the president continued. "I don't even think he's that political. I think he hates me, but that's okay. You know, he should, he should – I call him every name in the book trying to get him to do something."
Trump said his pressure campaign employed the sales tactics he picked up in the business world.
"I've been nice to him, I do it all ways," Trump said. "I know how to sell. I've been so nice to him. Fellas, you wouldn't believe. 'Let's have dinner, Too Late' – I call him 'Too Late.' Come on, Too Late, let's have dinner.' I do it every way in the book. I'm nasty, I'm nice – nothing works. He's, like, just a stupid person. But I don't expect anything, maybe he does a little bit."
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