Trump 'not happy' with Fed's interest rate hike
President Trump expressed his displeasure over the Federal Reserve raising the benchmark interest rate by another quarter-percentage point.
President Donald Trump said Wednesday he was unhappy with the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates.
“We are doing great as a country. Unfortunately, they just raised interest rates a little bit because we are doing so well. I’m not happy about that,” Trump told reporters during a press conference in New York.
The central bank hiked its benchmark federal funds rate to a range of 2 percent to 2.25 percent, marking the third rate hike of 2018 and the eighth since 2015. Officials have forecast a total of four rate increases this year, followed by three in 2019, amid rising inflation and strong U.S. hiring.
Trump has previously criticized the Fed for raising interest rates. In July, he wrote on Twitter that the move “hurts all that we have done.”
During his remarks Wednesday, Trump reiterated that Fed officials are raising rates because the U.S. economy is “doing so well.”
“I’d rather pay down debt or do other things, create more jobs. I’m worried about the fact that they seem to like raising interest rates. We can do other things with the money,” he said.
Trump also said years of near-zero interest rates following the 2008 financial crisis “killed” savers who expected to live off interest payments from banks. Those people, he noted, will benefit from the Fed’s increase in short-term rates.
“The people that did it right…got hurt the most, so in one sense I like it,” Trump added, “but basically I’m a low-interest-rate person.”
The Fed’s rate hikes have contributed to higher borrowing costs for consumers, as interest rates on credit cards, mortgages and other forms of lending have climbed. The rate on a 30-year mortgage was 4.92 percent Wednesday, up from 4.71 percent two months ago, according to Bankrate.com.