President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit the Federal Reserve in person on Thursday, an unusual movement that is also a great 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 at the Fed headquarters. Powell’s management of the project, harassed by excess costs, has been raised by White House officials as a possible pretext to eliminate it after a ruling of the Supreme Court indicated that the president’s powers on the executive officials of the branch do not necessarily apply to the Federal Reserve.
It is not clear when the visit to Trump’s schedule was added, which was launched on Wednesday night. The White House spent the first part of this week minimizing the speculation that the president would fire Powell, even when Trump continued to arigate him on social networks for leaving interest rates without changes. Trump appointed Powell for the role during his first term as president.
“There is nothing to tell me that [Powell] I should give up right now. He has been a good public servant, “said Treasury Secretary Scott Besent, told Fox Business on Tuesday. Later that day, Trump said he believes that Powell has” done a bad job, “but said Powell, whose term as president of the Fed ends in May,” will come very soon anyway. “On Wednesday, Besent said in MSNBC that Trump will not say goodbye to the central banker.
Trump favors the reduction of interest rates to boost activity in the economy. But Powell has said that the forecasts of faster price growth, largely as a result of Trump tariffs, suggest that interest rates should remain at their current levels to keep inflation under control. Earlier this month, Powell said the Fed would have already reduced rates if it were not for the expected impact of Trump import taxes.
“Indeed, we were waiting when we saw the size of the rates and essentially all inflation forecasts for the United States rose materially as a result of tariffs,” Powell said in a European forum of the Central Bank in Portugal.
The Fed will announce its next rate decision at the end of its next policy meeting on July 30, and they are expected to leave them without changes again.
The presidential visits to the main building of the Fed, located in the short term of the White House, are rare. The last president to do so was President George W. Bush, who attended the 2006 sworn ceremony of his former economic advisor, Ben Bernanke, as president. Only two other presidents have made the trip: Gerald Ford in 1975 and Franklin D. Roosevelt to inaugurate the building in 1937.
The Fed declined to comment when asked about the visit.
Administration officials have denounced the cost of the renewal project, saying that the Fed is spending billions in a “luxurious” and “ostentatious” palace that contains VIP dining rooms, terraces, elegant elevators and high -end marble.
However, Powell and the Central Bank have repeatedly said that the characteristics of the renewal that the White House and Republicans have taken advantage of are misleading.
On June 25, Powell told the Senate Banking Committee: “There is no [VIP] dining room. There is no new marble. We lower the old marble, we are putting it again. We will have to use a new marble where part of the old marble was broken. But there are no special elevators. There are only old elevators who have been there. “
The FED launched a frequently asked questions page that says that the increase in costs associated with the project is mainly due to the cost of raw materials, consultations with the review agencies and the building that contains more asbestos than expected.
These review agencies, of which Trump’s appointed were members, also pressed for more marble in the renewal plans instead of glass.
