Trump Confident Next Fed Chair Will "Cut Interest Rates"

[Financial News] U.S. President Donald Trump, who last month nominated the next chair of the Federal Reserve System (Fed), said he is confident that once his nominee takes the helm of the Fed, the benchmark interest rate will be cut.
In an interview with National Broadcasting Company (NBC) on the 4th (local time), Trump referred to the current U.S. federal funds rate of 3.5% to 3.75% and said, "I think rates are going to go down. Rates should go down." Trump added, "Our interest rates are far too high," and continued, "I have always been good at handling money, and as money has flowed into the United States, we have become a wealthy country again. We do have debt, but we also have growth, and that growth will soon make the debt look very small."
Trump, who last month nominated former Fed governor Kevin Warsh as the next Federal Reserve chair, said he has "little doubt" that Warsh would support rate cuts if he takes over as chair after May. Speaking about Warsh, Trump said, "He, too, will want to lower rates anyway," and added, "If he had come in and said, 'I want to raise rates,' he would not have gotten the job."
Trump’s latest remarks suggest that a willingness to cut interest rates was a key condition in his selection of the next Fed chair. From his first term, Trump argued that the economy should be stimulated and the government’s debt burden eased through rate cuts, and he has repeated the same argument since the start of his second term. When Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell did not lower rates as quickly as Trump wanted, Trump criticized him and, unusually early, named a successor. Warsh was once considered a monetary "hawk" who opposed heavy market intervention by regulators, but more recently he has cited productivity gains from artificial intelligence (AI) innovation as a reason why rate cuts are needed.
pjw@fnnews.com Park Jong-won Reporter