‘Call This Idiot’: Trump Ordered Cabinet Secretary To Pressure Fed Chair To Cut Rates |
Update, Jan. 12, 2026: Over the weekend, details emerged of a criminal investigation opened by the Trump administration into the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank. The ostensible reason: comments that Fed Chair Jerome Powell made to the Senate in 2025 about renovations to Fed buildings that are running over budget. But the Fed, and its ability to set interest rates free of political pressure from the White House, has long attracted Trump’s ire. In 2024, Forbes reported that Trump had, in his first term, ordered then-commerce secretary Wilbur Ross to convince Powell to cut rates and juice the economy, the same thing he wants the embattled banker to do now. That story is below:
In 2018, Donald Trump was presiding over a booming economy—but he was unhappy. Seeking to prevent the economy from overheating, the Federal Reserve, led by Trump appointee Jerome Powell, was slowly raising interest rates. At one point, Trump apparently flipped out, calling Powell an “idiot” and ordering his commerce secretary Wilbur Ross to call the Fed chairman and get him to reverse course, Ross says in his autobiography that comes out next month.
“President Trump was concerned that rate increases with questionable rationale might wreck the economic recovery, so he asked me to talk with Powell and get him to reverse course, or at least stop pushing rates up,” Ross writes. “He wasn’t kidding. As I recall him saying, ‘Please call this idiot and explain to him that I will repudiate his nomination, even though he has been confirmed.’”
As Ross tells it, he pushed back on Trump initially, telling him that he agreed Powell’s policy was wrong but that Trump shouldn’t “threaten to replace him or take some other big action against such an important independent agency.” “OK,” Trump responded. “But you have to call him and talk some sense into........