Trump Criticizes Fed Rate Hike, Demands Lower Interest Rates

President Donald Trump on Wednesday slammed the Federal Reserve after the central bank raised its benchmark rate for the first time in more than three years with a nonsensical rant in which he lectured the bank on how to run monetary policy, insisting interest rates "should be 1%, or less," hours

"Interest Rates in the United States should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World — BY FAR," Trump wrote. "Our Country is BOOMING with new Investment! If we stopped Trading with every country that we have a Deficit with, which is most of them, we would make, at least, 1.5 Trillion Dollars a year. The word 'Deficit' is nothing more than a fancy word for LOSS. We are 'carrying' almost every country in the World, and that cannot go on any longer. LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST!"

The post came as Trump was leaving to campaign in North Carolina for Senate candidate Michael Watley, just hours after the Federal Open Market Committee voted Wednesday to raise its target rate by a quarter point, to a range of 3.75 percent to 4 percent — the first increase, rather than cut, in the federal funds rate since 2023.

The move was engineered not by one of the Fed governors Trump has spent years attacking as "boneheads," but by Kevin Warsh, the chairman Trump elevated to the job in May after months of bullying his predecessor, Jerome Powell, over interest rates that he considered to be too high.

The committee's statement gave little comfort to a president demanding rate cuts. "Inflation remains elevated," the Fed said, adding that "today's policy action will support a timelier return to the Committee's 2% goal."

Projections released alongside the decision showed policymakers expect, on average, one more quarter-point increase before the end of the year, and none in 2027.

Warsh, who has said the Fed bears responsibility for "65 months of sustained, elevated inflation" and warned in an August speech that "we must be confident that underlying inflation is moving to our objective, clearly and at sufficient speed" before easing up, offered no forecast of his own at Wednesday's press conference — an omission NPR attributed to his general reluctance to hand markets forward guidance that could "tie the Fed's hands."

The backdrop Trump did not mention in his post is a re-acceleration of inflation rather than the "BOOMING" economy he described. Consumer prices rose 3.4 percent over the year through August, driven in part by a surge in gasoline prices that the government has linked to the fallout from the U.S. war with Iran. Diesel hit an all-time high of $6.31 a gallon on Wednesday, according to AAA, and wages have trailed price growth since April.

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