Seoul Gazette - Trump tours Fed, ramping up war on central bank

Trump -- who wants to oust Powell for refusing to lower interest rates but likely lacks the legal authority -- has threatened to fire the Fed chief over cost overruns for a renovation of its Washington headquarters.

"Getting ready to head over to the Fed to look at their, now, $3.1 Billion Dollar (PLUS!) construction project," Trump on his social media platform Truth Social before arriving.

Trump said Powell, who has vowed to stay on until the end of his term next May, would be present along with a group of senators, government officials and banking and construction professionals.

The afternoon tour comes with Trump desperate to shift the focus away from the crisis engulfing his administration over its decision to close the file on multi-millionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on trafficking charges.

Attorney General Pam Bondi informed the president in the spring that his name appeared in the Epstein files, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Trump has picked all manner of targets, including his Democratic predecessors and former chiefs of the security and intelligence services, as he tries to move Epstein out of the headlines.

He again berated Powell on Wednesday, moments after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had appeared on television to claim the banker's job was safe.

"Housing in our Country is lagging because Jerome 'Too Late' Powell refuses to lower Interest Rates," Trump posted.

Presidential visits to the Federal Reserve are not unheard of -- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gerald Ford and George W. Bush all made the trip -- but they are rare.

Trump has criticized Powell for months over his insistence on keeping short-term interest rate at 4.3 percent this year, after cutting it three times last year, when Joe Biden was in office.

Powell says he is monitoring the response of the economy to Trump's dizzying array of import tariffs, which he has warned could lead to a hike in inflation.

But Trump has angrily accused Powell of holding back the economy, calling the man he nominated in his first term "stupid" and a "loser."

- Threats and abuse -

Soaring costs for the Fed's facelift of its 88-year-old Washington headquarters and a neighboring building -- from an initial $1.9 billion to $2.5 billion -- have caught Trump's eye.

A significant driver of the cost is security, including blast resistant windows and measures to prevent the building from collapsing in the event of an explosion.

Trump's budget director Russell Vought, who was on Thursday's tour, wrote to Powell earlier this month to tell him the president was "extremely troubled by your mismanagement of the Federal Reserve System."

"Instead of attempting to right the Fed's fiscal ship, you have plowed ahead with an ostentatious overhaul of your Washington, D.C. headquarters," Vought wrote.

The Federal Reserve, the world's most important central bank, makes independent monetary policy decisions and its board members typically serve under both Republican and Democratic presidents.

Experts question whether Trump has the authority to fire Powell, especially since a Supreme Court opinion in May that allowed the president to remove other independent agency members but suggested that this did not apply to the Fed.

H.Yoon--SG