What Trump’s increasingly aggressive attacks on Powell are all about

President Donald Trump’s attacks on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell are so commonplace at this point that they barely register in financial markets these days. The rapidly intensifying multi-pronged efforts by Trump’s advisers to amplify and expand on Trump’s attacks are a good reason to rethink that indifference.

White House advisers are now unequivocally engaged in a coordinated effort to dramatically ramp up the pressure on Powell in public statements and through bureaucratic moves designed to give Trump more leverage. That leverage, sources say, isn’t designed to trigger Powell’s removal – at least not at the moment.

But with Trump’s frustration over the Fed’s refusal to bow to his pressure to lower rates growing by the day, it is the most consequential step taken thus far to bring that threat to Powell’s doorstep.

It also serves as the clearest window into the expanding effort to change Powell and the Federal Open Market Committee’s insistence on independence. Just three weeks, Trump candidly acknowledged his attempts had failed.

“I call him every name in the book trying to get him to do something,” Trump said, expressing bewilderment over Powell’s impervious response to his powers of persuasion. “I do it every way in the book. I’m nasty. I’m nice. Nothing works.”

Trump’s advisers are now showing they aren’t giving up.

A coordinated effort

While Trump’s anger over Powell, who he selected for chair in his first term, is longstanding, the aggressive public attacks on his policy views had been primarily his own.

But the frustration Trump candidly acknowledged last month over his ineffective one-man, one-sided rhetorical warfare against Powell appeared to immediately spark his allies to join the fight.

“The president has been saying this for a while, but it’s even more clear: the refusal by the Fed to cut rates is monetary malpractice,” Vance wrote in a post on X shortly after Trump’s comments.

Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency who had been sharply critical of the Fed chair for weeks, called on Powell to resign a few hours after Trump’s remarks.

The effort has grown more intense in the last week.

Peter Navarro, one of Trump’s longest serving advisers and senior counselor for trade and manufacturing, published an opinion column in The Hill newspaper headlined “Jay Powell is competing to be the worst Fed chair in history,” and then proceeded to appear on Newsmax, Scripps, CNBC and Fox Business to discuss the piece.

Navarro’s appearance on TV is always noted on Wall Street – his role as Trump’s most hawkish trade adviser often signals a harder line on tariff policy from the administration. But Navarro repeatedly made clear he didn’t want to focus on tariffs and had no intention of getting in front of the president on the issue.

He wanted to talk about Powell.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, asked about Powell on Newsmax, wasn’t subtle either.

“He’s got to change and he’s got to go,” Lutnick said. That statement in past administrations would’ve been extraordinary for a cabinet official.

It barely registered this week.