Trump To Visit Fed HQ As Criticism Of Powell Continues

Authored by Veronica Friedman via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump will visit the Federal Reserve headquarters on Thursday, the White House said, amid ongoing tensions between the administration and the central bank.

In a schedule released to the press on Wednesday night, the White House said the president would visit the Fed at 4 p.m. but did not say whether he would be meeting with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

Confirmation of Trump’s attendance came after White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair earlier this week said that administration officials would be visiting the central bank, but did not mention that the president would be joining them.

The Epoch Times reached out to the Federal Reserve for comment, but did not receive a response by publication time.

Trump has been critical of Powell over his reticence to cut interest rates more aggressively and called for his resignation. The president has said he would like the Federal Reserve to cut the benchmark interest rate from its current range of 4.25 percent to 4.50 percent to as low as 1 percent.

During a meeting at the White House with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Tuesday, Trump said of Powell: “I think he’s done a bad job. But he’s going to be out pretty soon, anyway. In eight months, he’ll be out … He should have lowered interest rates many times. Europe lowered their rate ten times. We lowered ours none. And it’s causing a problem for people that want to buy a home.”

Refurbishment

White House officials have also criticized the Federal Reserve over its handling of renovations to two historic buildings in Washington: the Marriner S. Eccles Building, the Fed’s headquarters, and the 1951 Constitution Avenue building.

Renovation costs for the Fed’s headquarters have risen to $2.5 billion, $700 million over budget, according to Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought.

Last week, Trump indicated that Powell’s handling of the renovation project could be grounds to fire him, saying, “I think it sort of is.”

“When you spend $2.5 billion on, really, a renovation, I think it’s really disgraceful,” he said.

The Fed responded to the criticism, stating on its website that major systems in both buildings, whose construction dates back to the 1930s, are “obsolete and in need of replacement for health and safety reasons.”

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell speaks at the Federal Reserve in Washington on July 22, 2025. Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo

Call for Internal Review

Earlier this week, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called for the Federal Reserve to conduct an internal review into nonmonetary policy operations, saying that “mission creep and institutional growth” have taken the central bank into areas beyond its core mission.

Bessent wrote on social media on Monday that while the Fed’s independence is the “cornerstone” of the United States’s economic growth and stability, that autonomy is “threatened by persistent mandate creep into areas beyond its core mission, provoking justifiable criticism that unnecessarily casts a cloud over the Fed’s valuable independence on monetary policy.”

He stated in his post on X that while he has no knowledge or opinion on the legal basis for the two buildings’ renovations, “a review of the decision to undertake such a project by an institution reporting operating losses of more than $100 billion per year should be conducted.”

The treasury secretary had earlier on Monday told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that there needs to be an examination of whether the central bank has been successful in its mission.

“If this were the [Federal Aviation Administration] and we were having this many mistakes, we would go back and look at why has this happened,” Bessent said.