Former President Donald Trump said during an interview that aired Wednesday that he would not reappoint Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, saying Powell was “always late.”
Under Powell, the Federal Reserve has increased interest rates to the highest levels since 2001 in an effort to combat inflation. The Consumer Price Index increased 3.2% year-over-year in July, despite the 11 interest rate hikes since March 2022. (RELATED: Fed Chair Claims ‘Nobody’ Expected Inflation To Get So High. Here Are The Economists Who Did)
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“I would not reappoint him. I thought he was always late, whether it was good or bad but he was always late,” Trump told Fox Business host Larry Kudlow. “I was surprised he was reappointed. Probably he got reappointed because they knew I didn’t like him much.”
Former Republican Presidential candidate Steve Forbes made a similar observation during a Dec. 15 appearance on Kudlow’s show.
“He’s always late,” Forbes said. “He was late fighting inflation, now he’s going to be late fighting a recession.”
Powell said that inflation would be transitory during an August 2021 speech at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, then admitted in September 2021 that inflation ended up lasting longer than he “expected.”
“I felt he was not good, in fact I was very tough on him. If I wasn’t I think we would have had much higher interest rates for much longer,” Trump told Kudlow. “We had a boom, and it was primarily, one time it looked like I was going to come down on him very hard and he dropped them so much that it was like, it was, he dropped them so much at one time.”
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