Kamala Harris counters Trump’s message that the president should have a say in Fed decisions

Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris reacted to Donald Trump’s recent statements that the president should have a hand in setting monetary policy.

Harris said she couldn’t “disagree more strongly” with Trump’s stance.

“The Fed is an independent entity and as president I would never interfere in the decisions that the Fed makes,” she told reporters at a campaign event in Phoenix on Saturday.

That’s a clear contrast to Trump’s comments last week, when he criticized the Fed’s current strategy and said he thinks he could do a better job.

“I feel the president should have at least (a) say in there,” Trump, the Republican nominee, said during a Thursday press conference at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.

“I think that in my case, I made a lot of money, I was very successful, and I think I have a better instinct than, in many cases, people that would be on the Federal Reserve or the chairman,” he said.

Trump was particularly critical of Chair Jerome Powell, whom he appointed in 2018. The Fed has “sort of gotten it wrong a lot, and he’s tending to be a little bit later on things. He gets a little bit too early and a little bit too late,” Trump said on Powell and the central bank’s rate-setting strategy.

Business leaders weighed in on Trump’s comments, too.

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said that independence is often crucial for central banks’ success, and it’s become standard in the US.

“I think if you look around the world’s economies, and you see where central banks are independent and operate freely, they tend to fare better than the ones that don’t. So I think that’s kind of the American way,” Moynihan said in a Sunday interview on CBS.

He acknowledged, though, that that independence doesn’t stop people (including himself) from giving advice to Chair Jerome Powell.

“Their job is to sort through it all and say what’s best for the US economy,” he said.

In a tweet last week, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for President Joe Biden posted a quote regarding Fed independence from the group on X.

“History could not be clearer regarding the lasting and damaging inflationary consequences of ignoring this lesson or reversing the hard-earned progress of the past half century.”

Trump’s comments came months after The Wall Street Journal reported that his allies are working on proposed policy changes, which include giving the president more control over the Fed.