President Donald Trump is expected to visit the federal reserve in person Thursday – an unusual decision which is also a major escalation in the White House pressure campaign against President Jerome Powell.
The visit will apparently allow Trump to inspect the renovation of $ 2.5 billion in progress at the Fed headquarters. Project management by Powell, assaulted by cost overruns, was raised by White House officials as a possible pretext for having removed it After a decision of the Supreme Court indicated The president’s powers on executive branches do not necessarily apply to the Federal Reserve.
It is not clear when the visit was added to the Trump calendar, which was published on Wednesday evening. The White House spent the first part of this week minimizing speculation that the president dismissed Powell, even if Trump continued to harangue on social networks for leaving unchanged interest rates. Trump appointed Powell in his first term.
“There is nothing that tells me that [Powell] should resign now. He was a good civil servant, “said Treasury Secretary on Tuesday, Scott Bessent on Treasury. Later in the day, Trump said he thought Powell had “done a bad job”, but noted that Powell, whose mandate as president of the Fed ended in May, “will be released soon enough.” Wednesday, Bessent said on MSNBC that Trump was not going to fire Powell.
Trump promotes the drop in interest rates to stimulate activity in the economy. But Powell said that forecasts for faster prices growth, largely, the result of Trump prices suggest that interest rates should remain at their current level to keep inflation under control. Earlier this month, Powell said the Fed would now have reduced rates If not for the expected impact of Trump’s import taxes.
“Indeed, we were careful when we saw the size of the prices and essentially all inflation forecasts for the United States increased considerably due to prices,” Powell said at a European Central Bank forum in Portugal.
The Fed will announce its next rate decision at the end of its next political meeting on July 30 and should let them unchanged again.
The presidential visits to the main building of the Fed, a few minutes by car from the White House, are rare. The last president to do so was George W. Bush, who attended the 2006 sweating ceremony of his former economic advisor, Ben Bernanke, as president. Only two other presidents made the trip: Gerald Ford in 1975 and Franklin D. Roosevelt to inaugurate the building in 1937.
The Fed refused to comment when asked about the visit.
Administration officials denounced the cost of the renovation project, claiming that the Fed spent billions for a “sumptuous” and “ostentatious” palace containing VIP rooms, terraces, fanciful elevators and high -end marble.
However, Powell and the central bank have repeatedly said that the characteristics of the renovation that the White House and the Republicans had seized were misleading.
On June 25, Powell told the senatorial banks committee: “There is no [VIP] dining room. There is no new marble. We have removed old marble, we give it. We will have to use a new marble where part of the old marble has broken. But there are no special elevators. There are just old elevators that were there. »»
The Fed launched a FAQ page on its website This indicates that the increase in costs associated with the project is mainly due due to the cost of raw materials, consultations with examination agencies and the building containing more asbestos than expected.
These examination agencies, whose appointments Trump were members, also Pushed for more marble In renovation plans rather than glass.
