US President Donald Trump has piled pressure on Kevin Warsh in advance of his first meeting as chair of the Federal Reserve by demanding lower interest rates days after a strong US jobs report fuelled bets on higher borrowing costs.
In an interview aired on Sunday, the president warned that the country should not be “penalised by immediately raising interest rates” as investor expectations rose that the Fed would increase them by the end of the year.
“There’s no reason to raise interest rates,” Trump told NBC’s Meet the Press. “We built the country by doing great and having rates low. What they do is when they raise interest rates, they try to kill success. I don’t want to kill success. We should actually lower interest rates.”
Warsh, Trump’s pick to head the US central bank, was confirmed in the role last month. He will chair his first meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) on June 16th-17th.
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Trump has called for the Fed’s benchmark rate – currently in a range of 3.5 to 3.75 per cent – to be slashed to 1 per cent or lower. The president repeatedly criticised Warsh’s predecessor Jerome Powell as a “moron” and a “numbskull” for failing to cut rates quickly enough.
His latest remarks come after a strong jobs report on Friday suggested the labour market had stabilised after a rocky 2025. That prompted investors to further raise bets that the Fed would be forced to increase rates by the end of the year to combat a surge in inflation triggered by the Iran war.
“We’re doing great, and it’s unfair that whenever you do great, they want to raise interest rates,” said Trump. “It should be the opposite way.”
Warsh had previously indicated a preference for lower borrowing costs. But a jump in inflation since the outbreak of the Middle East conflict has prompted some FOMC members to raise the prospect of an increase.
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“If recent trends continue, it may soon be appropriate to act,” said Beth Hammack, president of the Cleveland Fed and a member of the FOMC, on Friday. She said the latest employment report suggested the labour market was now “roughly in balance” while “high inflation is the bigger concern”.
A burst of higher fuel prices has rippled through the US economy since Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz at the outset of the war, pushing inflation to a three-year high of 3.8 per cent in April. Economists polled by Bloomberg expect it to rise to 4.2 per cent when May data is released on Wednesday.
Treasury secretary Scott Bessent has said it was reasonable for the Fed to “wait for some clarity” on the inflationary effects of the conflict before proceeding with further cuts.
But Trump, while insisting he wants the new Fed chair to make his own decisions, has doubled down on his calls for lower rates.
“Kevin is fantastic, and I want him to do whatever he wants. I don’t want to have a big influence on him,” Trump told NBC. “But my feeling is that when a country is doing well, they shouldn’t be penalised by immediately raising interest rates. They should actually be incentivised.”
– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026
