“‘Too Late’ Powell should resign, just like Adriana Kugler, a Biden Appointee, resigned. She knew he was doing the wrong thing on Interest Rates. He should resign, also!” said President Donald Trump in a Friday evening Truth Social post.
Trump has criticized Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell for months over interest rates. While the president wants the independent monetary agency to lower them, it announced this week that it would keep rates even.
“The Committee seeks to achieve maximum employment and inflation at the rate of 2% over the longer run,” said a Federal Open Market Committee statement issued Wednesday. Per the latest Consumer Price Index report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, inflation increased by 2.7% in the 12-month period ending this June.
During the period of high inflation kicked off by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Fed raised rates in an effort to bring inflation down. Inflation was stubborn even under those efforts but has eased somewhat from its peak and the Fed also eased its rate hikes. Still, Americans have been dealing with both increased prices and higher rates, which make it more expensive to borrow money.
In a Friday statement, the Federal Reserve Board announced that Adriana D.
Kugler would step down from her position as a governor on the board seven-member board, effective next Friday. She was appointed to the position in September 2023, when former president Joe Biden was in office. Kugler plans to return to Georgetown University to serve as a professor in the fall.
She graduated with her Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley and from McGill University with first class joint honors degrees in economics and political science. Previously, Kugler served as a professor at Georgetown, and as vice provost for faculty. Before she joined the Fed board, Kugler also served as U.S. executive director at the World Bank and as chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor from 2011 to 2013, during the tenure of former President Barack Obama.
“It has been an honor of a lifetime to serve on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System,” Kugler said in a statement. “I am especially honored to have served during a critical time in achieving our dual mandate of bringing down prices and keeping a strong and resilient labor market.”
Kugler was on the Committee on Financial Stability, the Committee on Federal Reserve Bank Affairs, the Committee on Board Affairs, and the Subcommittee on Smaller Regional and Community Banking, and she served as the Fed board’s representative to the Center for Latin American Monetary Studies.
All members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors are nominated by presidents for full terms of 14 years though some are appointed to fill unfulfilled terms. Of the remaining six members, Biden also appointed Vice Chair Philip N. Jefferson, Michael S. Barr and Lisa D. Cook. Trump appointed Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle W. Bowman and Christopher J. Waller.
Powell was first appointed as chair, a four-year term, when Trump was president in 2018. He was re-appointed for another four-year term in 2022, when Biden was president.
“I appreciate Dr. Kugler’s service on the Board and wish her very well in her future endeavors,” he said of the governor’s resignation. “She brought impressive experience and academic insights to her work on the Board.”
This April, CBS News Business Analyst Jill Schlesinger weighed in on Trump’s calls for Powell to step down before his term ends in 2026.
“So, there is supposedly a sort of like an understanding that the Federal Reserve is an independent agency,” she explained. “And as a result, the president may not like the Fed, may do something called jawbone the Fed, like basically talk trash about the Fed and the Fed chair,” but cannot remove them.
He has continued to call for the Fed to cut interest rates and for Powell’s resignation. This month, he said alleged mismanagement of a building project could be grounds for booting Powell from the board.
Trump’s comments about Kugler and Powell came alongside reports that Trump fired U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner Erika McEntarfer after a weaker-than-expected jobs report. A Friday press release from the White House said there was a “lengthy history of inaccuracies and incompetence by Erika McEntarfer, the former Biden-appointed Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”