President Donald Trump pushed Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to lower interest rates at their first in-person meeting since the president’s inauguration, the White House said.
The president told Powell that he believes the Fed chair is making a mistake by not lowering rates, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a briefing Thursday.
That “is putting us at an economic disadvantage to China and other countries, and the president’s been very vocal about that, both publicly and, now I can reveal, privately,” she added.
Leavitt said they did not discuss whether Trump would seek to remove Powell from his role. Powell’s term as Fed chair expires in May 2026.
A number of administration officials attended the meeting, including Vice President JD Vance, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, according to a White House official.
The Fed said in a statement earlier Thursday that the two met at the White House at the president’s invitation. They discussed economic developments including growth, employment and inflation, according to the statement. They last met in November 2019.
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“Chair Powell did not discuss his expectations for monetary policy, except to stress that the path of policy will depend entirely on incoming economic information and what that means for the outlook,” the Fed said.
Powell also told the president Fed officials will make decisions based solely on “careful, objective, and non-political analysis,” the central bank said. Leavitt confirmed the statement’s accuracy.
The meeting came on the heels of a court ruling Wednesday that blocked many of Trump’s tariffs on US trading partners announced this year. A federal appeals court on Thursday issued a temporary stay of that ruling, allowing the tariffs to remain in effect for now.
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Powell and Fed officials have held interest rates steady in 2025, arguing a patient approach to policy is appropriate amid economic uncertainty caused by Trump’s expanded and evolving use of tariffs. Fed policymakers have said they expect the announced tariffs to weigh on economic growth and boost inflation.
Trump pressure
The Fed’s on-hold stance has drawn blowback from Trump, who has repeatedly called for lower interest rates and criticised Powell’s leadership of the central bank. Trump has said Powell is often too late to adjust policy and has called the Fed chief “a major loser,” among other insults.
An April social media post from Trump revived speculation, initially raised during his first presidential term, that he would seek to remove Powell from the chair role. Trump later took the idea off the table and a Supreme Court decision this month shielded the Fed from such a move, as part of a broader decision allowing the president to fire top officials at independent agencies.
Powell has repeatedly said Fed officials take an apolitical approach to policy and base decisions on their judgment of what is in the best interest of the economy. He reiterated that message to Trump on Thursday, according to the Fed.
The Fed chief said that he and his colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee “will set monetary policy, as required by law, to support maximum employment and stable prices and will make those decisions based solely on careful, objective, and non-political analysis.”
