“If I decide to turn it, it will be out quickly, believe me. This Thursday, April 17, Donald Trump answers yet another question in the Oval office on Jerome Powell and his maintenance at the head of the Federal Reserve (“Fed”), the American central bank. The press has been speculating on a possible dismissal for weeks, rumor fueled by the tenant of the White House, who decked out with a nickname: “Monsieur too late”. According to the president, Powell is lacking in the reactivity necessary to lower interest rates and boost the American economy.
Since his election, Trump has released a new accusation from his hat: the Fed would have become a supporter, such as the American media or justice. Jerome Powell, its president, which he nevertheless appointed in 2018, would have “done everything” to help the Democrats by lowering the rates last September, less than two months before the election. Trump promised him during his campaign: he will seek “remuneration” against all those who opposed him. The heads must roll, including that of Powell…
A man of the seraglio
It had however so well started between the two men. On November 2, 2017, by formalizing his appointment at the head of the Central Bank, from the Roseraie de la Maison Blanche, Donald Trump praised “Jay”, as Jerome Powell calls himself by his friends. “He is strong, committed, intelligent,” he says. At the time, no one is thinking of criticizing this promotion, because the lucky man was a man of the seraglio: a good -complex republican (his mother worked part -time for the party in the past) and old school.
Son of banker, he passes for a pro, a safe bet. He has no doctorate in economics unlike his three predecessors, but he has almost made all his career in finance, in particular to the investment bank Dillon, Read & Co., where he is the protégé of the president, Nicholas F. Brady. When the latter is appointed secretary to the Treasury of President George Bush father, Powell follows him and becomes his assistant. In 1993, he returned to the private sector, became a partner in the Carlyle investment group, which enabled him to accumulate a pretty fortune (between 20 and 55 million dollars according to official documents dated 2019).
But Powell is not one to have luxury tastes. It is an austere who laughs by cycling, playing the guitar and going to the concerts of the Grateful Dead group, which he has always been a fan. He lives in Chevy Chase, the opulent suburbs of Washington where he was born 72 years ago, in a $ 5 million house that is pale next to the palaces that billionaires of the Trump administration have been offered. In 2010, he swapped his work in gold for another researcher within a “think tank”, the Bipartisan Policy Center, the center of Bipartisan politics, a subject which is so dear to him that he often wears mauve ties, a mixture of republican red and democratic blue. His salary: one dollar per year.
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-Far from being a “Yes Man”
In 2011, he thus helped the Obama administration in Bisbille with the Republicans about the recovery of the public debt ceiling, which, a year later, earned him to be appointed to the Fed Council. When it is necessary to replace the Democrat Janet Yellen at the head of this advice, Donald Trump naturally chooses him. Powell is confirmed in the Senate by a large majority of 84 votes against 13. During his inauguration ceremony on February 5, 2018, he underlines the importance of the independence of the institution, his “long -standing tradition, non -partisan, to make objective decisions, based solely on the best available data”.
It may be from there that the misunderstanding comes from him and Trump. The president reasons as a real estate promoter: a good pattern of the Fed is the one that lowers rates. With Powell, he thought he was calling a “Yes Man”. Missed. Doped by the drop in taxes voted in 2017, the economy risks overheating. Powell increases rates. “I’m not delighted,” said Trump on July 19, 2018. The next day, he drives the nail in a tweet. The honeymoon will therefore have lasted less than six months. It is the first time since Richard Nixon that an American president publicly criticizes the president of the Fed, and this is only the beginning of hostilities.
For Trump, Powell is an enemy
Powell knows what awaits him. He counterattacks using the weapon he knows best, that of pedagogy. He multiplies press conferences “in simplified” English to explain his decisions to the general public and, above all, to elected officials. “I will use the Capitol carpets by walking its corridors and meeting its members,” he said in 2018. “Yellen and I had also spent a lot of time with the legislators to explain our strategy and answer their questions, but he, he does much more,” notes, admiring, Ben Bernanke, president of the Fed from 2006 to 2014, in his book “21st Century Monetary Policy” (“21st century monetary policy”, not translated).
Powell thus establishes precious networks in the congress, on the right and on the left, which prove to be very useful when Donald Trump describes him as “enemy”, comparing him to the Chinese president XI. Pragmatic in the soul, it is neither a “falcon” obsessed with the maintenance of inflation below the threshold of 2 % (as were Paul Volcker or Alan Greenspan), nor a “dove” wishing to help employment (like Ben Bernanke or Janet Yellen). He has almost no enemies. Result: when, in 2019, the White House said that the president is looking for – already – to dismiss him, he can respond with an end of inadmissibility during a press conference: “I think that the law is clear. I have a four -year term. I intend to go to the end. »»
He saved his head
Except that it is not so simple: legally, no text, with the exception of a 90-year-old jurisprudence, prevents the President of the United States from dismissing the Fed boss. Confirmed at his post in 2022 by Joe Biden, Jerome Powell is again on the hot seat since the triumphant return to Donald Trump three months ago. This time, the situation has changed: the master of the White House has all the powers in the Capitol, and he intends to carry out the trade war he had timidly started during his first mandate, which puts Jerome Powell in an impossible situation, because who says customs duties, says inflation. What is the Patron of the Fed doing in these cases? He rides the rates. Powell was content to let them unchanged, which obviously caused the president’s fury.
In mid-April, we learned that the legal services of the White House studied the feasibility of a landing in good and due form. But Donald Trump realized that he could not turn Powell without causing a stock market crash, while the markets are already tested by customs duties. This is the reason why, on April 22, he finally announced his maintenance, provoking a surge in the scholarship. Since then, the bad figures of the American economy have fallen: – 0.3 % of GDP in the first quarter of 2025, a first since the covid. “The fault of Biden, not Trump,” said the president. If the economy contracts again in the second half, it will be officially in recession. You will have to find a scapegoat. Jerome Powell, whose mandate ends on May 15, 2026, will then be an appointed candidate.
