President Donald Trump said Wednesday that his pick to lead the Federal Reserve would not have received the job offer had he expressed a desire to raise interest rates.
Speaking with “NBC Nightly News” anchor Tom Llamas in an extensive interview, Trump said there was “not much” doubt in his mind that interest rates would soon be lowered. Pressed on how he could be so sure, the president said, “I just think they’re going to be lowered. I mean, they should be lower.”
Tune in for Tom Llamas’ interview with President Donald Trump tonight on “NBC Nightly News” at 6:30 p.m. ET, with an extended version on NBC News NOW’s “Top Story” at 7 p.m. ET, and even more on Super Bowl Sunday on NBC.
“We’re way high, OK?” Trump said. “We’re way high in interest. We have now, with me and with all the money, I’m — I’ve always been good at money — and with all the money coming into our country, we’re a rich country again. We have debt, but we also have growth, and the growth will soon make the debt look very small.”
“Because there’s — the greatest way — you have two ways,” Trump continued. “You can cut, cut, cut, and we do that anyway, and we did that. You know, we got rid of hundreds of thousands of federal workers. And those workers went out and got themselves jobs in the free enterprise system. And you know what? That’s called making America great again. We had 10 workers in the federal government for every single job. When the Democrats go in, they hire. I could right now give you the best employment numbers in history. You know what I do? Go out and hire 2 million people, put ‘em in the federal government. I do the opposite.”
Llamas asked Trump if Kevin Warsh, a former member of the Federal Reserve’s board of governors whom Trump tapped to be the central bank’s next chair, understands that the president wants him to lower interest rates.
“I think he does, but I think he wants to anyway,” Trump said. “I mean, if he came in and said, ‘I want to raise them.’
“If he said that, he wouldn’t have gotten the job?” Llamas interjected.
“He would not have gotten the job,” Trump responded. “No.”
Last week, Trump announced he had officially nominated Warsh to succeed Jerome Powell, the current chair of the Federal Reserve. Trump has chastised Powell for months for not making more aggressive rate cuts.
The Fed chair does not have unilateral control of the interest rates set by the central bank. They’re decided by the Federal Open Market Committee, which is made up of 12 members, with seven permanent governors and a rotating slate of four regional reserve bank presidents and the president of the New York Fed.
In January, the central bank kept interest rates steady after three consecutive months of cutting rates, with only two members in favor of a rate cut. Powell in recent months has defended the Fed’s direction, saying the decisions are based on where inflation and the labor market stands.
Powell has also accused the White House of using an investigation to ramp up a pressure campaign to cut rates. Last month he said the Department of Justice had subpoenaed the Fed with the threat of criminal indictment over renovations to Federal Reserve office buildings.
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