Freshman Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, told Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to resign and encouraged colleagues to demand the same.
Moreno, who was backed by Donald Trump in his 2024 election, sent a letter to Powell on Wednesday and attacked the chair’s “fear” of the president’s tariffs increasing prices.
“At this point, I firmly believe your economic analysis is clouded by your personal feelings on trade policy,” Moreno wrote.
“You should resign immediately and allow the president the deference to select someone he feels can make the changes needed to restore the credibility of the Federal Reserve System.”
Moreno pointed out to Powell that the chair’s support of “student loans being forgiven, a policy which is clearly inflationary” under then-President Joe Biden.
“You deliberately ignore the harms from these poor policy choices and at the same time fail to acknowledge President Trump’s progress at taming inflation,” the senator wrote.
Moreno mentioned to Powell that last week’s hiring data “blew past expectations,” and the reluctance to lower interest rates “is costing our country $400 billion per year.”
“Clearly your relationship with the president, your inaction on rates, and your mismanagement of the Federal Reserve balance sheet, all lead to an obvious conclusion,” Moreno wrote.
A member of the Senate Banking Committee, Moreno spoke about Powell to his colleagues during a closed-door Senate lunch on Wednesday, Axios reported.
Sens. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., and Rick Scott, R-Fla., have joined Moreno in being the only senators to have called for Powell’s resignation.
Powell, who was appointed by Trump in 2017, has resisted calls from the president to lower the prime interest rate.
“I call him ‘too late.’ He’s always late,” Trump told reporters at a Cabinet meeting Tuesday.
“But he wasn’t late with Biden before the election, he was cutting like crazy.”
During Powell’s appearance before Congress last month, Moreno echoed some of Trump’s complaints about Powell’s reluctance to cut rates and accused Powell of political bias.
“You should consider whether you are looking at this through a fiscal lens or a political lens because you just don’t like tariffs,” Moreno said.
Powell did not respond.
Other GOP senators, for their part, have not been critical of Powell.
“I don’t think a bunch of politicians ought to be telling the Federal Reserve how to regulate,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told Axios. “The Federal Reserve ought to be independent.
“In the countries where they’re not, generally speaking, the Powerball jackpot is 287 chickens and a goat. Their economy is an embarrassment.”