Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Thursday that he would not step down from his position if President-elect Donald Trump asked for his resignation.
When asked by reporters if he would resign per Trump’s request, Powell simply said: “No.”
“Not permitted under the law,” Powell said during a press conference after the Fed cut interest rates by a quarter point two days after former president Donald Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris.
Though Trump appointed Powell in 2017, he repeatedly slammed the chairman and the central bank during his administration for not easing monetary policies quick enough.
During his presidency, he called Powell and his Fed colleagues “boneheads” for not slashing interest rates.
In 2020, Trump criticized the central bank and claimed it was behind its global peers in reviving the economy after the pandemic.
“I have the right to remove him,” Trump said of Powell, who was reappointed by President Joe Biden for another term, which ends in 2026.
Trump has promised that rates would come down if he won a second term in the White House and argued that the president should have a say in the bank’s decisions.
“I don’t think I should be allowed to order it, but I think I have the right to put in comments as to whether the interest rates should go up or down,” Trump told Bloomberg on Oct. 15.
On Thursday, Powell said Trump’s win would not have an immediate impact on the Fed’s policies – which aim to achieve the Fed’s dual mandate of maximum employment and price stability.
“In the near term, the election will have no effects on our policy decisions,” Powell said.
Powell acknowledged that the next administration’s policies could affect the Fed’s approach to its dual mandate, but he said it is too soon to tell.
“It’s such an early stage,” Powell said. “We don’t know what the policies are, and once we know what they are, we won’t have a sense of when they’ll be implemented.”
