White House ramps up pressure on Fed's Powell three weeks before next interest rate decision

President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against the Federal Reserve and Chair Jerome Powell to lower interest rates entered a new front this week

President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against the Federal Reserve and Chair Jerome Powell to lower interest rates entered a new front this week.

The latest line of attack comes from Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, who wrote to Powell on Thursday to call out the renovation of the Federal Reserve’s Washington headquarters.

“The President is extremely troubled by your mismanagement of the Federal Reserve System,” Vought wrote in a letter posted to X. “Instead of attempting to right the Fed’s fiscal ship, you have plowed ahead with an ostentatious overhaul of your Washington, D.C. headquarters.”

Asked by reporters Friday if he planned to fire the Fed chief, Trump said “no.” But fears persist. Trump’s attacks against Powell have been unrelenting, calling him everything from “very stupid” to insulting him as a “low IQ” person, and even saying, “I think he hates me.”

Vought, a longtime trusted Trump aide and veteran of his first term - when he served in the budget office in multiple roles - seized on testimony that Powell gave to the Senate Banking Committee on June 25, when he was asked by Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., about the Fed’s renovations. Scott told Powell that “Americans have lost confidence in the Federal Reserve since 2021.”