President Donald Trump has said the quiet part out loud. His threats to terminate Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell if Powell doesn’t cut interest rates are motivated by one simple desire: to make it cheaper for the administration to add about $4 trillion to the federal debt.

The central bank remains cautious, even as calls for rate cuts grow louder from the White House and other policymakers.

President Donald Trump has spent months criticizing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell, most recently arguing that the central bank should immediately cut interest rates to make it easier for the United States to finance ballooning deficits,

The president said Jerome H. Powell’s “termination cannot come fast enough,” but there’s no precedent for removing a Federal Reserve chair early. April 17, 2025 3 min

The Federal Reserve faces a cooling job market and persistently high prices, Chair Jerome Powell told Congress, signaling that an interest rate cut may be near.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell discussed why the central bank held its benchmark federal-funds rate steady again during a press conference Wednesday following the Fed’s latest policy ...