Back in July, in an interview with CNBC’s Joe Kernen, Donald Trump lamented the fact that relatively hawkish Fed policy is indirectly helping America’s trade partners weather the tariff storm.
“I’m not thrilled because we go up and every time you go up they want to raise rates again”, the President said, adding that while he’s “not happy about it”, for the time being he’s going to “let them do what they feel is best.”
A day later, Trump took to Twitter to accuse China and Europe of currency manipulation on the way to explicitly blaming Jerome Powell for “hurting all that we’ve done.”
For Trump, Fed rate hikes are bad for two reasons. First, they drive the policy divergence between the U.S. and the rest of the world wider, thereby supporting the dollar. The stronger the dollar, the weaker the tariffs, all else equal. Second, Fed hikes work against Trump’s pro-cyclical fiscal policy, which is designed to overheat the U.S. economy.
Fast forward a month (give or take) from Trump’s July broadside against his Fed chair and the President lashed out at Powell again, first at a fundraiser held at the Southampton home of Howard Lorber, the chairman of hot dog company Nathan’s Famous, and then in an exclusive interview with Reuters.
“I expected Jerome Powell to be a cheap-money guy”, Trump reportedly said in the Hamptons.
Here’s the thing, Mr. President. If what you wanted was a “cheap-money” Fed chair, you needn’t have looked very far because you already had one in Janet Yellen.
But keeping Yellen would have meant Trump swallowing his pride by acquiescing to an Obama holdover and – perhaps “worse” for a President who “grabs ’em by the p*ssy” – allowing a woman to hold one of the most important positions on the planet.
So Yellen was a non-starter for Trump, who decided on Jerome Powell, and here we are in September with the Fed on course to hike a total of four times in 2018, to the detriment of the trade war and potentially at the cost of curbing the economy before it overheats and explodes.