The drumbeat that President Trump will fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell got louder Wednesday, with reporting from CBS News, Bloomberg, CNBC, and The New York Times all adding to the sense that Trump is getting closer to making the unprecedented move.
Stocks were lower following the news, but the biggest move in markets was coming from the foreign exchange market, where the dollar was getting crushed against other major currencies.
The dollar quickly fell as much as 1% against the Japanese yen, lost about 0.7% against the euro, and fell about 0.5% against the British pound.
The dollar index fell about 0.7%.
Trump has for some time complained about Powell’s lack of aggressive rate cuts this year, saying the Fed chair is “too late,” among other barbs.
And while the spat between Trump and Powell — who was named Fed chair by Trump during his first term in office — has now spanned multiple administrations, some on Wall Street also see Trump’s desire to cut Powell as coming back to aiding his key economic agenda: tariffs.
“There is method to President Donald Trump’s madness regarding Fed Chair Jerome Powell,” Ed Yardeni of Yardeni Research wrote in a note to clients on July 1.
“Trump has been hammering Powell almost daily recently because doing so is very effectively hammering the foreign-exchange value of the dollar. Trump wants a weaker dollar to boost US exports and depress US imports. He has said that he favored a weaker dollar many times in the past, but now he has found a way to achieve that: by beating up on Powell.”
As for whether Trump will be able to fire Powell, the Supreme Court in May issued a ruling that walled off the Federal Reserve from other independent agencies that had their leaders removed by Trump.
