President Trump again questioned the Federal Reserve’s conduct of monetary policy Wednesday, saying that he was “not happy” with the decision earlier in the day to raise interest rates. At the same time, though, Trump acknowledged that the central bank is reacting to the strength of the economy, for which he claimed credit.
“Unfortunately, they just raised interest rates a little bit, because we are doing so well,” Trump said during a press conference at the United Nations in New York. “I’m not happy about that.”
Fed officials announced earlier in the day that they were raising the target interest rate by a quarter percentage point to as high as 2.25 percent, and indicated that they’d continue hiking rates as the economy continues to grow. Chairman Jerome Powell said that the economy is in a “pretty good moment.”
Trump boasted that the Fed raised rates because the economy is strong, and claimed that commerce would have slowed if he had not been elected. He later also argued that his record compares favorably to President Obama’s given that the Fed’s target interest rate was near zero for most of Obama’s tenure.
“[Obama] was playing with zero-interest money. He was playing with funny money. That’s easy,” Trump said. “I’m playing with fairly expensive money.”
Nevertheless, Trump complained multiple times during the press conference about the decision to raise rates.
“I’d rather pay down debt or do other things, create more jobs,” he said. “So I’m worried about the fact that they seem to like raising interest rates. We can do other things with the money.”
