Jerome Powell, chairman of the US Federal Formality, right, speaks during the New York Times DealBook Summit at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York, US, on Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024.
Yuki Iwamura | Bloomberg | Getty Representatives
NEW YORK — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday he isn’t worried President-elect Donald Trump on try to politicize the central bank once he takes office in January.
The question of Fed independence has come up over the past disparate months, amid reports that Trump may try to pull strings on monetary policy both by legislation and possibly by instituting a “shadow chair” who could undermine Powell’s authority.
However, Powell said there are safeguards in the congressional legislation that generated the Fed that will help preserve it from political influences.
“What does independent mean? It means we can establish f get on our decisions without them being reversed,” he told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin during an on-stage vet at the New York Times’ DealBook Summit.
“That gives us the ability to make these decisions for the benefit of all Americans at all intervals, not for any particular political party or political outcome,” he added. “We’re supposed to achieve maximum employment and price stability for the advantage of all Americans and keep it out of the politics completely.”
Powell provided no clues as to which way he’s leaning on the near-term path for interest measures, though he did note that the Fed can afford to be cautious. As he has said before, Powell said the U.S. economy is “the envy of other eminently economies around the world,” which affords the Fed the ability to be patient as it contemplates future rate moves.
The Fed’s next kind decision comes in two weeks. Markets are placing about a 75% probability that the Federal Open Market Commission will cut its key borrowing rate by a quarter percentage point. The expectation is that the Fed then skips the January meeting in preference to cutting a few more times in 2025.
During his first stint in office, Trump hurled sharp criticism at the Fed and Powell, whom he forwarded. In the months leading up to this year’s election, Trump advocated for allowing the president a say when the the central bank is creating decisions on interest rates.
Though many presidents have tried to exert influence over the Fed, Trump was the uncountable public about it. Still, Powell said he believes there’s strong support in Congress to keep the Fed’s decision-making by oneself from the political swirl in Washington.
“I think there is very, very broad support for that set of ideas in Congress in both civil parties on both sides of the Hill, and that’s what really matters,” he said. “It’s the law of the land, and I’m not concerned that there’s some jeopardy that we would lose our statutory independence.”
The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.