President Trump said Thursday the Federal Reserve took “unnecessary and destructive actions,” although he praised the rest of the U.S. economy.
“Despite the unnecessary and destructive actions taken by the Fed, the Economy is looking very strong, the China and USMCA deals are moving along nicely, there is little or no Inflation, and USA optimism is very high,” the president tweeted.
Mr. Trump’s comments come after the Federal Reserve chose to keep rates steady and announced it expected to not raise them in 2019.
The president was critical of the Federal Reserve for raising rates four times last year, calling them “crazy” in October after its fourth hike.
Mr. Trump even went as far as to blame the Federal Reserve in late March for preventing the country’s 2018 gross domestic product from hitting 4 percent.
“If we didn’t have somebody raising interest rates and do quantitative tightening, we would have been over 4 [percent] instead of at 3.1 [percent]” in terms of growth, Mr. Trump told Fox Business. “The world is slowing, but we’re not slowing.”
Mr. Trump announced in late March that he would nominate conservative economic analyst Stephen Moore to fill a vacancy on the Federal Reserve Board. Mr. Moore was a former columnist for The Washington Times.
• Bailey Vogt can be reached at bvogt@washingtontimes.com.
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