President Donald Trump stepped up attacks on his handpicked Federal Reserve chairman on Wednesday, claiming Jerome Powell has “low IQ” and suggested that he has narrowed down the list of potential replacements to three or four people.
“He’s an average mentally person…Low IQ for what he does,” Trump said of Powell during remarks at a press conference at the NATO summit in the Netherlands Wednesday. “I think he’s a very stupid person, actually.”
Trump has been berating Powell all year, arguing the Fed’s reluctance to slash interest rates is costing the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars in interest.
Trump nominated Powell for the powerful position in 2017. He’s one of the only major Trump nominees whom President Joe Biden kept in place. Biden renominated Powell for another four-year term that expires in May 2026.
Asked about whether he’s started interviewing a replacement for Powell, Trump said: “Yeah, I know within three or four people who I’m going to pick.”
Trump added that Powell’s term is up “pretty soon fortunately, because I think he’s terrible.”
Powell has argued it’s too early to cut interest rates because many economists anticipate Trump’s tariffs will eventually boost the inflation rate, which is lower today than when Trump took office.
During a hearing on Tuesday, Powell poured cold water on calls from his colleagues to cut rates as soon as next month, noting that most forecasters “expect a fairly substantial wave of price increases to come through to the consumer.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick echoed Trump’s attacks on the Fed chair on Wednesday. “Jerome Powell – your job is to help Americans not hurt them, so do your job and CUT our absurdly high interest rates at your next meeting,” Lutnick said in a post on X.
Powell has also faced some defections from his own ranks this week.
Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman on Monday downplayed the potential impacts of Trump’s tariffs on prices and said the US central bank should swiftly lower rates to preserve the labor market’s health.
On Friday, Fed Governor Christopher Waller said tariffs will likely only result in a “one-off” increase in inflation. Both Bowman and Waller are Trump appointees.
On Monday during a moderated discussion in Milwaukee, Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee said the Fed could lower borrowing costs again “if we do not see inflation resulting from these tariff increases.”
Powell, on the other hand, has cautioned that tariffs could start causing prices to rise starting in the summer. And if that happens, cutting rates could reignite inflation. At its policy meeting earlier this month, the Fed kept its benchmark lending rate unchanged for the fourth consecutive time.
“If we make a mistake, people will pay the cost for a long time,” Powell said in his testimony Wednesday.
CNN’s Bryan Mena contributed to this report.
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