WASHINGTON (AP) — After months of criticizing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, President Donald Trump took the fight to the Fed’s front door on Thursday, publicly scorning the central bank chief over the ballooning costs of a long-planned building project. Powell pushed back, challenging the president’s latest price tag as incorrect.
Wearing hard hats and grim faces, standing in the middle of the construction project, Trump and Powell addressed the assembled TV cameras. Trump charged that the renovation would cost $3.1 billion, much higher than the Fed’s $2.5 billion figure. Powell, standing next to him, shook his head.
The Fed chair, after looking at a paper presented to him by Trump, said the president was including the cost of renovating a separate Fed building, known as the Martin building, that was finished five years ago.
The visit represented a significant ratcheting up of the president’s pressure on Powell to lower borrowing costs, which Trump says would accelerate economic growth and reduce the government’s interest payments. Presidents rarely visit the Fed’s offices, though they are just a few blocks from the White House, an example of the central bank’s independence from day-to-day politics.
“We have to get the interest rates down,” Trump said later after a short tour, addressing the cameras this time without Powell. “People are pretty much unable to buy houses.”