By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Donald Trump will not try ousting Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell before the central banker’s term ends and would consider JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon for treasury secretary if he won the Nov. 5 election, the former president told Bloomberg in an interview published on Tuesday.
JPMorgan declined to comment on Trump’s remarks. Powell’s term as chair expires in 2026. Powell’s seat on the Fed Board of Governors expires in 2028. The Trump interview was conducted in late June, according to Bloomberg.
Powell said on Monday he has no plans to leave his post as head of the U.S. central bank before his term expires. Powell was first appointed to the Fed Board of Governors by former President Barack Obama, but it was Trump who picked him to lead the central bank, a post Powell assumed in early 2018.
Trump turned against him soon after, railing against the interest rate hikes that the Fed delivered during Powell’s first year at the helm. Trump went so far as to discuss firing the Fed chief, although aides later said Trump came to the conclusion that he likely did not have the power to do so. That did not stop Trump from continuing to threaten Powell throughout his presidency, a practice President Joe Biden, Trump’s successor, has refrained from during his term.
Trump said in the Bloomberg interview that the Federal Reserve should abstain from cutting rates before the November elections in which the Republican presidential candidate faces Democrat Biden.
Powell has been asked repeatedly over the last week whether the election would play into the Fed’s decision on whether to cut rates, and Powell said again on Monday that he and other central bank policymakers do not take politics into account in their decision-making.
On Dimon, Trump said he was considering him for the top job at the Treasury Department. Trump had until recently been critical of Dimon.
Last year, Trump called Dimon a “Highly overrated Globalist” on his Truth Social platform.
Dimon, like many other corporate executives, had condemned the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters who made an unsuccessful attempt to prevent Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 elections that Trump lost to Biden.
However, recently Dimon has praised some of Trump’s positions and policies.
“Take a step back, be honest. He was kind of right about NATO, kind of right on immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Trade tax reform worked. He was right about some of China,” Dimon told CNBC earlier this year. “He wasn’t wrong about some of these critical issues.”
Trump also said in the interview that he would reduce the corporate tax rate to as low as 15%.
In addition to targeting China for new tariffs of anywhere from 60% to 100%, he said he would impose a 10% across-the-board tariff on imports from other countries, citing complaints about foreign countries not buying enough U.S. goods.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington and Kanjyik Ghosh; Editing by Caitlin Webber and Daniel Wallis)
