US president Donald Trump was due to visit the Federal Reserve’s headquarters in Washington on Thursday amid rising tension between the administration and the independent overseer of the nation’s monetary policy.
“The Fed is working with the White House to accommodate their visit,” said a spokesperson for the US central bank.
Mr Trump has repeatedly demanded that Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell slash US interest rates and has frequently raised the possibility of firing him, though the president has said he does not intend to do so.
On Tuesday, Mr Trump called the Fed chief a “numbskull”.
Mr Trump is making what is a rare presidential visit to the Fed less than a week before the central bank’s 19 policymakers gather for a two-day rate-setting meeting.
They are widely expected to leave the Fed’s benchmark interest rate in the 4.25-4.50 per cent range where it has been since December, as they wait to see how the economy performs in the face of the administration’s tariffs and other economic policies.
The White House did not say if Mr Trump will be meeting Powell on Thursday. And the Fed referred questions on the matter to the White House.
Mr Powell typically spends the Thursday afternoon before a rate-setting meeting doing back-to-back calls with Fed bank presidents as part of his preparations for the session.
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Mr Powell, who was elevated by the US president to the top Fed job in 2018 and reappointed by former president Joe Biden four years later, last met Mr Trump in March. At the time, the US president summoned him to the White House to press him to lower rates.
The visit is also taking place as Mr Trump battles to deflect attention from a political crisis over his administration’s refusal to release files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, reversing a campaign promise. Epstein died in 2019.
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White House officials have ramped up Mr Trump’s pressure campaign on Mr Powell in recent weeks, accusing the Fed of mismanaging the renovation of two historic buildings in Washington and suggesting poor oversight and potential fraud.
White House budget director Russell Vought has pegged the cost overrun at “$700 [€595 million] million and counting”, while treasury secretary Scott Bessent called for an extensive review of the Fed’s non-monetary policy operations, citing operating losses at the central bank as a reason to question its spending on the renovation.
Mr Trump’s public criticism of Mr Powell and flirtation with firing him have previously upset financial markets and threatened a key underpinning of the global financial system – that central banks are independent and free from political meddling.
His visit, happening against the backdrop of his antipathy for Mr Powell, contrasts with a handful of documented previous presidential visits.
Then-president Franklin Delano Roosevelt visited the Fed in 1937 to dedicate the newly built headquarters that today comprise the construction site that Mr Trump is visiting. Most recently, former president George W Bush went to the Fed in 2006 to attend the swearing-in of Ben Bernanke as Fed chief.
Republican senator Mike Rounds said on Thursday he saw no problem with Trump’s visit, though he added that Mr Powell’s independence as Fed chief is “critical for the markets. I think he’s done a good job of that.”
“I think the more information the president can glean from this, probably the better off we are in terms of resolving any issues that are outstanding,” said Mr Rounds, noting that Mr Powell had indicated “that they have had a significant amount of money, just in terms of foundation work and so forth, that was not anticipated to begin with”. – Reuters
