Trump turns up heat on Fed ahead of expected rate cuts: 'It's something that they know they shouldn’t be doing.'

New comments from former President Donald Trump are turning up the political pressure on the Federal Reserve as policy makers make it clear they are getting closer to cutting interest rates.

In an interview with Bloomberg published Tuesday night, the Republican nominee again reiterated that central bank officials should not ease monetary policy before the November election.

"It’s something that they know they shouldn’t be doing," he said.

But Fed officials — including Fed Governor Chris Waller in a new speech Wednesday titled "Getting Closer" — are suggesting that the time for cuts is in fact drawing near.

"While I don’t believe we have reached our final destination, I do believe we are getting closer to the time when a cut in the policy rate is warranted," Waller said in his speech at the Kansas City Federal Reserve.

Evidence is mounting that disappointing inflation data in the first three months of the year may have been an "aberration," Waller added, and that inflation data so far from the second quarter show steady progress toward the Fed's goal of 2%.

"The effects of tighter monetary policy [may] have corralled high inflation," he said.

New York Fed President John Williams also told the Wall Street Journal Wednesday that an interest-rate cut could be warranted in the coming months — though not at the central bank’s next meeting July 30-31 — if the slowdown in inflation continues.

Markets are currently betting the central bank will cut rates in September, just seven weeks before Election Day. Traders are pricing in a more than 90% chance of that happening, up from 70% just a few weeks ago.

'Do our jobs'

A September rate cut could cause the central bank to face political criticism not just from Trump, but also from Republican and Democratic lawmakers.

Lawmakers from both parties signaled last week during Congressional testimony from Fed Chair Jerome Powell they would criticize the central bank if this key September decision doesn't go their way.

If Powell and his colleagues choose to keep rates at a 23-year high, a growing chorus of Democratic critics calling for cuts may reach a crescendo. But if policymakers do indeed cut, Republicans from Trump on down will be sure to cast the move as caving to election-year pressure.

Powell’s response to the new wave of political pressure was to echo an independent, apolitical approach he has honed throughout 2024, emphasizing that the only criteria that matters to him is data on prices and jobs.

"This is my fourth presidential election at the Fed, and I can tell you we come to work the next day and do our jobs," Powell said.

He made the same point this past Monday during an interview at the Economic Club of Washington.

But the Fed chair also signaled that the time for cuts is getting closer, citing a recent turnaround in inflation readings following hotter-than-expected data in the first quarter, including the release last Thursday of encouraging numbers from the Consumer Price Index for the month of June.

The Consumer Price Index on a "core" basis — which excludes volatile food and energy prices the Fed can’t control — rose 3.3% year over year in the month of June. That was down from 3.4% in May and 3.6% in April.

The Fed gets a new June reading from its preferred inflation gauge — the "core" Personal Consumption Expenditures Index — on July 26.

Powell was asked Monday if he intended to stay through the end of his term as chair in May 2026, and he gave a one-word answer: "Yes."

When asked if he would stay longer should he be reappointed as chair, he said, "I have nothing on that for you today."

Powell's full term as a member of the Fed's board of governors doesn't end until Jan. 31, 2028.

Trump in his Bloomberg interview said "I would let him serve it out," and added: "especially if I thought he was doing the right thing."

Stephen Moore, a top Trump confidant, said during an appearance this week on Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid podcast that when Powell's term expires "then we would look for someone new, maybe a Judy Shelton or a Larry Kudlow or an Arthur Laffer or somebody who's more in line with his economic philosophy."

"And I think that like makes a lot of sense."

'A rate cut in the not-too-distant future'

Waller, the Fed governor, laid out a couple scenarios on Wednesday that could lead to a rate cut — an optimistic one and a more likely one.

In the optimistic scenario the Fed continues to get more favorable inflation reports consistently. In that scenario Waller said he could envision “a rate cut in the not-too-distant future.”

In what he deems the more likely scenario, inflation data comes in uneven — not as good as the previous few months — but still consistent overall with progress on bringing inflation down toward 2%.

In that case "it would be a matter of timing as to when I thought we are making sustainable progress to 2 percent inflation. In this case, a rate cut in the near future is more uncertain."

While the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge has been running near 2 percent at an annual rate recently, he said he needs to see more evidence that it will be sustained.

Waller also said he believes current data are consistent with the US economy achieving a soft landing, and will be looking for data over the next couple months to confirm that.

The job market, he said, is in a sweet spot and that things are loosening rather than weakening.

But there is more upside risk to unemployment than “we have seen for a long time,” noting that a continued drop in job vacancies could lead to a larger increase in unemployment.

Waller was also asked Wednesday about his reaction to the Republican ticket in 2024, including Vice President nominee JD Vance.

"Politics is politics," he said. "That's not my job. My job is to look at the economy and react to it and make my best decisions to achieve the dual mandate that Congress gave me. So like I tell everybody, whatever happens in the political world, I just have to take that as a given and then make the best policy I can from that."

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