President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he still has confidence in Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh, but also said he wants the central bank to cut interest rates to 1% “or lower.” Trump’s comments came hours after the central bank announced its first rate increase since 2023. Warsh, who was nominated by Trump as chairman of the Federal Reserve, had defended Wednesday’s widely expected 25 basis point rate hike as appropriate. The 12-member Federal Open Market Committee’s decision to raise benchmark interest rates to a target range of 3.75% to 4% was unanimous. “Yes,” Trump told reporters when asked after arriving on a campaign trip to North Carolina if he still had confidence in Warsh. “I trust Kevin, but he has, you know, a very tough board, he has a board that was put there by other people,” Trump said. “And I said, I talked to Kevin and I said, ‘You might as well vote with the board. It’s not going to matter.’ “The board is very hostile. They are very political. They’re doing the wrong thing,” Trump said. “They’re raising rates to make Trump do as badly as possible,” the president said before addressing a campaign event for Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley. “The problem they have is we have the greatest economy in history. We have over $21 trillion invested in this country, which is five times more than we’ve ever had before,” Trump said. “So they’re raising that just for political reasons, and that’s a race against them.” Earlier Wednesday and after the Fed’s rate decision, Trump, in a Truth Social post, demanded that the Fed lower interest rates. “We’re ‘taking over’ almost every country in the world, and that can’t go on any longer,” Trump wrote. “LOWER THE RATES.” INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST!” he wrote. The FOMC, in a statement after the rate hike, said, “Inflation remains elevated.” Updated projections released Wednesday show that a large majority of Fed officials expect another rate hike is on the way. But Trump, who has relentlessly pressured the Fed to sharply reduce borrowing costs, insisted in his Truth post that U.S. rates will rise. “They should be 1%, or less, because we are the best credit in the world, by far.” wrote Trump, who has repeatedly claimed that the United States has raised as much as $20 trillion or more during his second term. Fact checkers say Trump’s numbers are false. “If we stopped trading with all the countries with which we have a deficit, which is most of them, we would make at least $1.5 trillion a year,” Trump said in Wednesday’s post. Less than two weeks earlier, Trump threatened that if the Federal Reserve doesn’t cut rates, he would cut off trade with countries that run trade surpluses with the U.S. That group includes most of the U.S.’s major trading partners, along with dozens of other countries. years-long pressure campaign against the Federal Reserve, which had temporarily subsided after Warsh succeeded Jerome Powell as chairman. So far, however, Trump and his aides have refrained from attacking Warsh directly. White House spokesman Kush Desai told Fox News on Wednesday afternoon that Trump still “absolutely” believes in the independence of the Federal Reserve. “But that doesn’t change the fact that the president of the United States has a First Amendment right” to speak out “when things go wrong,” Desai added.
