Trump floats firing ‘numbskull' Fed chair Powell
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump escalated his criticism of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday -- publicly mulling whether to fire the official and appoint himself to the central bank.
The Republican leader, who regularly berates Powell over the bank's decisions not to lower interest rates, took to Truth Social to smear the banker as a 'numbskull,' 'moron' and 'obvious Trump Hater.'
'I fully understand that my strong criticism of him makes it more difficult for him to do what he should be doing, lowering Rates, but I've tried it all different ways,' said Trump, who appointed Powell during his first term.
'I've been nice, I've been neutral, and I've been nasty, and nice and neutral didn't work!'
Powell's term does not conclude until next year. He has said his dismissal would be unlawful, and that he has no intention of stepping down voluntary if Trump asks.
'I don't know why the Board doesn't override this Total and Complete Moron!' Trump posted. 'Maybe, just maybe, I'll have to change my mind about firing him? But regardless, his Term ends shortly!'
Trump lashed out after the Fed held interest rates steady for a fourth consecutive meeting on Wednesday, forecasting higher inflation and cooler growth as Trump's tariffs take hold.
The projections were its first since Trump unleashed sweeping 10 percent tariffs on almost all trading partners in April.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Star
12 minutes ago
- The Star
Europeans seek 'digital sovereignty' as US tech firms embrace Trump
BERLIN (Reuters) -At a market stall in Berlin run by charity Topio, volunteers help people who want to purge their phones of the influence of U.S. tech firms. Since Donald Trump's inauguration, the queue for their services has grown. Interest in European-based digital services has jumped in recent months, data from digital market intelligence company Similarweb shows. More people are looking for e-mail, messaging and even search providers outside the United States. The first months of Trump's second presidency have shaken some Europeans' confidence in their long-time ally, after he signalled his country would step back from its role in Europe's security and then launched a trade war. "It's about the concentration of power in U.S. firms," said Topio's founder Michael Wirths, as his colleague installed on a customer's phone a version of the Android operating system without hooks into the Google ecosystem. Wirths said the type of people coming to the stall had changed: "Before, it was people who knew a lot about data privacy. Now it's people who are politically aware and feel exposed." Tesla chief Elon Musk, who also owns social media company X, was a leading adviser to the U.S. president before the two fell out, while the bosses of Amazon, Meta and Google-owner Alphabet took prominent spots at Trump's inauguration in January. Days before Trump took office, outgoing president Joe Biden had warned of an oligarchic "tech industrial complex" threatening democracy. Berlin-based search engine Ecosia says it has benefited from some customers' desire to avoid U.S. counterparts like Microsoft's Bing or Google, which dominates web searches and is also the world's biggest email provider. "The worse it gets, the better it is for us," founder Christian Kroll said of Ecosia, whose sales pitch is that it spends its profits on environmental projects. Similarweb data shows the number of queries directed to Ecosia from the European Union has risen 27% year-on-year and the company says it has 1% of the German search engine market. But its 122 million visits from the 27 EU countries in February were dwarfed by 10.3 billion visits to Google, whose parent Alphabet made revenues of about $100 billion from Europe, the Middle East and Africa in 2024 - nearly a third of its $350 billion global turnover. Non-profit Ecosia earned 3.2 million euros ($3.65 million) in April, of which 770,000 euros was spent on planting 1.1 million trees. Google declined to comment for this story. Reuters could not determine whether major U.S. tech companies have lost any market share to local rivals in Europe. DIGITAL SOVEREIGNTY The search for alternative providers accompanies a debate in Europe about "digital sovereignty" - the idea that reliance on companies from an increasingly isolationist United States is a threat to Europe's economy and security. "Ordinary people, the kind of people who would never have thought it was important they were using an American service are saying, 'hang on!'," said UK-based internet regulation expert Maria Farrell. "My hairdresser was asking me what she should switch to." Use in Europe of Swiss-based ProtonMail rose 11.7% year-on-year to March compared to a year ago, according to Similarweb, while use of Alphabet's Gmail, which has some 70% of the global email market, slipped 1.9%. ProtonMail, which offers both free and paid-for services, said it had seen an increase in users from Europe since Trump's re-election, though it declined to give a number. "My household is definitely disengaging," said British software engineer Ken Tindell, citing weak U.S. data privacy protections as one factor. Trump's vice president JD Vance shocked European leaders in February by accusing them - at a conference usually known for displays of transatlantic unity - of censoring free speech and failing to control immigration. In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio threatened visa bans for people who "censor" speech by Americans, including on social media, and suggested the policy could target foreign officials regulating U.S. tech companies. U.S. social media companies like Facebook and Instagram parent Meta have said the European Union's Digital Services Act amounts to censorship of their platforms. EU officials say the Act will make the online environment safer by compelling tech giants to tackle illegal content, including hate speech and child sexual abuse material. Greg Nojeim, director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, said Europeans' concerns about the U.S. government accessing their data, whether stored on devices or in the cloud, were justified. Not only does U.S. law permit the government to search devices of anyone entering the country, it can compel disclosure of data that Europeans outside the U.S. store or transmit through U.S. communications service providers, Nojeim said. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE? Germany's new government is itself making efforts to reduce exposure to U.S. tech, committing in its coalition agreement to make more use of open-source data formats and locally-based cloud infrastructure. Regional governments have gone further - in conservative-run Schleswig-Holstein, on the Danish border, all IT used by the public administration must run on open-source software. Berlin has also paid for Ukraine to access a satellite-internet network operated by France's Eutelsat instead of Musk's Starlink. But with modern life driven by technology, "completely divorcing U.S. tech in a very fundamental way is, I would say, possibly not possible," said Bill Budington of U.S. digital rights nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Everything from push notifications to the content delivery networks powering many websites and how internet traffic is routed relies largely on U.S. companies and infrastructure, Budington noted. Both Ecosia and French-based search engine Qwant depend in part on search results provided by Google and Microsoft's Bing, while Ecosia runs on cloud platforms, some hosted by the very same tech giants it promises an escape from. Nevertheless, a group on messaging board Reddit called BuyFromEU has 211,000 members. "Just cancelled my Dropbox and will switch to Proton Drive," read one post. Mastodon, a decentralised social media service developed by German programmer Eugen Rochko, enjoyed a rush of new users two years ago when Musk bought Twitter, later renamed X. But it remains a niche service. Signal, a messaging app run by a U.S. nonprofit foundation, has also seen a surge in installations from Europe. Similarweb's data showed a 7% month-on-month increase in Signal usage in March, while use of Meta's WhatsApp was static. Meta declined to comment for this story. Signal did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment. But this kind of conscious self-organising is unlikely on its own to make a dent in Silicon Valley's European dominance, digital rights activist Robin Berjon told Reuters. "The market is too captured," he said. "Regulation is needed as well." (Additional reporting by Riham Alkousaa in Berlin, Charlie Devereux in Madrid, Toby Sterling in Amsterdam and AJ Vicens in Detroit; Editing by Catherine Evans)
The Star
12 minutes ago
- The Star
Trump says he will decide on US involvement in Iran within two weeks
US President Donald Trump has announced that he would make a decision about US military involvement in Iran within two weeks, offering a timeframe for a possible intervention into a conflict that flared last week and has so far remained limited to Israel and the Islamic Republic. 'Based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision on whether or not to go within the next two weeks,' Trump said via White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who asserted that Tehran might be 'a couple of weeks' away from being able to deploy a nuclear weapon. 'As for correspondence between the United States and the Iranians, I can confirm that correspondence has continued as you know we were engaged with six rounds of negotiations with them in both indirect and direct ways,' Leavitt said in a briefing. Leavitt delivered Trump's statement and discussed the president's thinking as he faced defiance from many in his own party over his comments on Wednesday, in which he said that he 'may' or 'may not' order US forces to participate in Israel's strikes against the Islamic republic. Steve Bannon, one of the most influential voices from Trump's 'America First' coalition, has warned against any US military operations supporting Israel's bid to destroy Iran's nuclear programme absent a diplomatic deal. 'We can't have another Iraq,' Bannon said in a discussion hosted on Wednesday by The Christian Science Monitor, referring to the war started in 2003, which is estimated to have killed some 4,700 US and allied troops. 'The Israelis have to finish what they started. They started this. They should finish it,' Bannon said. Other political figures, who have staunchly supported Trump over many years – including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, and far-right pundit Tucker Carlson – have also come out against US military intervention. They are clashing with other Republicans who parrot Trump's insistence that Iran is likely developing nuclear weapons or already has one, which they call an outcome that must be stopped by any means necessary. Republicans supporting US military action against Tehran seem to include Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, whose military background carries weight with her colleagues. 'Maybe our public is not aware that 43 Americans lost their lives on October 7 [2023] at the hands of Hamas, which is an Iran-backed terrorist organisation,' Ernst said in a contentious Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday. Leavitt said that Iran only needed approval from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and two weeks to complete production of a weapon that would pose 'an existential threat ... to the entire world'. 'Iran has all that it needs to achieve a nuclear weapon,' she said. 'All they need is a decision from the Supreme Leader to do that, and it would take a couple of weeks to complete the production of that weapon, which would of course, pose an existential threat not just to Israel, but to the United States and to the entire world. 'That is something that the entire world, including countries like Russia, is in agreement with: that Iran should not and cannot obtain a nuclear weapon,' Leavitt added. The press secretary was also asked whether Trump might want to involve Beijing in possible negotiations, just hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping held a call in which they urged Israel and Iran to stop fighting. Asked whether Trump administration officials were concerned about China supporting Tehran, Leavitt said: 'I don't believe we're seeing any signs of that at this moment in time.' When pushed on whether a decision not to strike Iran might send a message to Beijing on Taiwan, Leavitt pointed to the 'very respectful' and 'cordial relationship' between Trump and Xi. She noted that Trump had 'long maintained' this relationship, even during his first term, emphasizing that the US and China 'share many strategic interests, not only in economics but also in global affairs and foreign policy'. Asked about the division among Republicans and the Trump base's reluctance to engage in a foreign war, Leavitt urged his supporters to 'trust' the president, citing his 'incredible instincts' and describing him as a 'peacemaker in chief' who preferred diplomacy but was not 'afraid to use strength as well'.
The Sun
an hour ago
- The Sun
Taiwan central bank says US debt rising too fast may impact trust in Treasuries
TAIPEI: Taiwan's central bank governor warned on Saturday that rapidly rising U.S. debt could be 'unfavourable' to the outlook for U.S. Treasuries and that U.S. President Donald Trump's trade policies have made investors cautious. Taiwan's $593 billion in foreign exchange reserves are more than 80% made up of U.S. Treasury bonds, according to the central bank, which said earlier this month that Treasuries were 'sound' and still favoured by investors. It added there were no worries about the dollar's position as the leading international reserve currency. Governor Yang Chin-long, in a speech posted on the central bank's website, said Trump's repeated criticisms of the U.S. Federal Reserve's monetary policy have caused concerns about its independence. 'In addition, Trump 2.0's trade policy has made investors hesitant about holding U.S. Treasury bonds; Trump's budget, the 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act,' may cause U.S. debt to expand too quickly, which is unfavourable to the outlook for U.S. sovereign debt,' he said. 'All of these have had a significant impact on the international monetary system centred on the U.S. dollar and based on U.S. creditworthiness.' Trump's sweeping tax-cut and spending bill is the centerpiece of his domestic agenda. The bill would lead to a larger-than-expected $2.8 trillion increase in the federal deficit over the decade, despite a boost to U.S. economic output, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected on Tuesday. Trump, in his first few weeks in office, also announced sweeping tariffs on a broad swathe of countries and trading partners, including Taiwan, only to pause them for 90 days in April to allow for talks to take place. Yang said Trump had been hoping the tariffs could resolve the U.S. trade deficit. 'However, the tariff policy not only fails to solve the structural problems, it will also impact the U.S. economy, and threaten to further affect the outlook for global trade and the economy.'
