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‘Why weren’t you more forceful when you wanted that job?’
That’s President Donald Trump on Wednesday directing a comment to Kevin Warsh — a former Fed governor and aide to President George W. Bush — during a White House speech delivered as a part of a grand ceremony to commemorate the completion of the first phase of a trade pact between the U.S. and China.
Trump used the signing ceremony in the East Room, attended by a 10-person delegation from China, Capitol Hill lawmakers and a number of honchos from Wall Street, as well as Warsh, to take another shot, this time indirectly, at Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, whom he selected for the role after opting not to extend the term of Janet Yellen.
The 45th U.S. president has repeatedly criticized Powell, charging him with not helping to bolster the economy and stock market by keeping central-bank policy sufficiently lax. That, despite the fact that the Fed last year delivered three quarter-point rate cuts in successive meetings to bring its key rate to a 1.75%-2% range, which has helped to push the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.40% to record heights at the psychologically significant level of 29,000, while the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.18% and the technology-laden Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +0.15% also have soared to all-time peaks, much of their gains rung up on the back of relief that a trade détente, which has been viewed as impeding executive strategy, had been achieved.
Trump’s comments may be particularly biting to Powell, given how Warsh is viewed by the president. According to an Axios article back in April, citing sources familiar, Trump mused over whether he could replace Powell with Warsh.
Warsh was on Trump’s shortlist for the Fed’s top spot at the outset, but the president was persuaded to go with Powell by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, according to reports.
