US President Donald Trump lashed out at Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell Wednesday after the central bank head said he would stay on as a governor.
“Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell wants to stay at the Fed because he can’t get a job anywhere else – Nobody wants him,” Trump said on his Truth Social network.
Powell says he’ll remain at Fed on board of governors
Earlier, in what will be his last press conference as Fed chair, Jerome Powell said he intends to remain at the central bank as a member of its Board of Governors. He said Justice Department officials had assured him over the weekend they wouldn’t restart a controversial criminal investigation into the central bank unless the Fed’s internal watchdog recommended that.
Still, he noted, the US Attorney for the District of COlumbia has said she might reopen the probe if warranted.
“I’ve said that I will not leave the board until this investigation is well and truly over with transparency and finality, and I stand by that,” Powell said. “I will leave when I think it’s appropriate to do so.”
The Fed’s Wednesday statement said Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari and Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan “supported maintaining the target range for the federal funds rate but did not support inclusion of an easing bias in the statement at this time.”
Governor Stephen Miran dissented in favor of a quarter-point reduction in rates.
Follow the reaction in real time on Bloomberg’s TOPLive blog
The 8-4 vote marked the first time since October 1992 that four officials dissented against a Federal Open Market Committee decision. The committee left their benchmark federal funds rate in a range of 3.5% to 3.75%.
The S&P 500 and Treasuries remained lower after the decision.
Heading into the meeting, investors and economists widely expected the Fed to leave rates unchanged through the remainder of the year.
Officials made a slight change to their statement, adding some emphasis to a line describing uncertainty emanating from the war in the Middle East. The new wording referenced the “high level” of that uncertainty.
Officials repeated the phrase referring to “the extent and timing of additional adjustments” to rates. Policymakers lowered rates three times in the closing months of 2025.