President Donald Trump reiterated his criticism of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell Tuesday during a dinner with business leaders in Tokyo attended by Apple’s Tim Cook, Salesforce’s Marc Benioff, and Softbank’s Masayoshi Son.
Trump dined with chief executive officers including Salesforce Inc.’s Marc Benioff, Toshiba Corp.’s Taro Shimada, and Rakuten Group Inc.’s Hiroshi Mikitani as he looked to tout Japanese investment in the US and wrapped his visit to Tokyo.
OpenAI Inc. co-founder Greg Brockman, Honda Motor Co. President Toshihiro Mibe and Anduril Industries Inc. founder Palmer Luckey were also among the guests at the dinner at the home of US Ambassador to Japan George Glass.
The event came as the White House announced a new series of pledged economic investments in the US. Under a trade framework reached earlier that year, Trump lowered and capped tariffs on Japanese goods in exchange for a pledge for Japan to fund $550 billion in US projects.
MacDailyNews Take: The sooner Powell is gone, the better.
On interest rates, Powell was way late to hike, then didn’t go nearly high enough, and then started cutting too early. Three strikes and you ought to be out. – MacDailyNews, November 15, 2024
Now Powell is too late to cut. Four strikes and counting.
Receipts:
In July 2023, the Fed stopped raising rates too soon. – MacDailyNews, July 2, 2024
A premature rate cut by the Fed is of higher probability in an election year. – MacDailyNews, April 2, 2024
As we wrote in February 2023, “When certain quarters, including the Fed, delude themselves and others that ‘inflation is transitory’ and waste at least a year before doing a mere portion of what is necessary* (interest rate hikes), the price will be paid for being delusional and late.”
‘Tis best to get a handle on inflation, if you know how, while you still can. – MacDailyNews, May 11, 2021
Stop the misguided crusade against domestic energy production and profligate federal spending and inflation will be stopped dead in its tracks. It’s not difficult. – MacDailyNews, May 11, 2022
For new generations, sometimes tough lessons have to be retaught and learned the hard way. As we go through this, remember: It’s always darkest before the dawn. – MacDailyNews, July 14, 2022
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How wrong you are MDN.
Many on the right believe he’s a leftist working for the Obama/Biden team to crush Trump.
HOWEVER
The receipts you show reveal something else. Rather, he was indeed massively late and not nearly as aggressive as needed to be during the Biden admin to stop massive inflation, and as we all know, it was massive. So was he against Biden and hurting the country for political sake back then? Or is he a leftist hack wanting to hurt Trump now for political sake?
Can’t have it both ways.
The answer is: He is simply incompetent. He was truly too slow and didn’t raise nearly fast enough or egressive enough when the Biden admin was making our dollars worthless by printing massive amounts of cash for COVID relief to PPP monies, you name it, it was massive and did massive damage. Powell has been massively late and minimal in doing jack squat to help investment and borrowing moving again. .25% did nothing, because people know there must be more coming – so everyone is still on the sidelines. Ugh…
The ONLY thing I can think of that Powell did that looks highly political, is before last year’s election, he dropped the rates, what, nearly 1 basis point? And really, inflation was still bad, inflation rate of growth was slowing but it was still growing way too high. So the only reason he cut would probably be due to politics, to help Harris/Biden or Biden/Harris (who was that again that was running? Ha!), over the top. But didn’t help.
One translation/end result: AAPL will rise (as will many others).
The central issue isn’t whether Powell is/was too slow or too fast, but that the Fed remains independent from the whims of the President, whoever that may be. The President cannot be allowed to randomly fire people at the Fed cause he thinks he’s smarter than the 12 people on the Fed. That’s what banana republics and dictators do when they think they can manipulate economic data to their advantage. Eventually such actions will backfire, because the policies won’t match the reality. Sure, maybe the rates should be cut a half-point or even 1 percent, but Trump thinks rates should be slashed by 3 percentage points, which would almost certainly ratchet up inflation.
Also, remember that the decision to raise or lower rates is made based on a majority vote among the committee members, it’s not just Powell making the decision. The last vote was 11 in favor and 1 dissent, with Fed Governor Stephen Miran, a recent appointee of President Donald Trump, favoring a larger half‑point cut. The Fed is not a place we need a bunch of lackeys (from either party) making decisions.
I’d love to know why people would downvote the idea that the Fed needs to be as independent as possible from political machinations and especially from any single individual, president or otherwise. Turning the Fed into a rubber stamp committee for either political party is a terrible idea. Is it possible that the Fed acted “politically” in the past? Sure. But if the President has the ability to fire any and all members on a whim, it will be guaranteed that the Fed will politicized in the future.
They down vote independence for the “Fed” because they’re ideologues.
Look I’m coming into this late but I’ll tell what the scenario is:
Trump sacks Powell
The markets go crazy leading to a major sell-off
More importantly the long term bond rates will rise leading to No.4
A large sell-off of US reserves leading to a devaluation in the US
Greenback
This then leads to inflation and with the tariffs…more inflation
The US cannot pay its way and the Roman situation comes into play.
A broke nation cannot be a superpower AND look after it’s populace
in which case it’s all over.
And FYI I’m a retired Macro economist.
When it comes to economics and economics in general Trump is a destroyer and a moron. I’m not talking about politics I’m talking about economics. Look at the US; it’s a mess and it’s only going to get worse. That’s the scenario and it’s happened in other countries so why destroy? It’s either willfulness , stupidity, or both!