Trump says U.S. economy would have grown 4% without Fed tightening

President Donald Trump said Thursday kept up his criticism of the Federal Reserve, despite its move to a dovish policy path. The president said that if it wasn’t for the decisions of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and his colleagues, the U.S. economy would have expanded above a 4% annual rate in 2018. “Frankly if we didn’t have somebody that would raise interest rates and do quantitative tightening, we would have been at over 4[%] instead of a 3.1[%],” Trump said, in an interview to air Friday morning on Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria” show.

The U.S. economy grew at a 2.9% rate in 2018, the Commerce Department reported, with the fourth quarter up 3.1% from year-ago levels. Asked if he thought he influenced the Fed’s dovish policy stance, Trump replied: “I don’t know. I hope I didn’t influence frankly, but it doesn’t matter.” He then quickly added, “I don’t care if I influenced or not.”

On Wednesday, the Fed’s released its latest projections of the path of interest-rates that showed no interest rate hikes this year. That’s down from two rate hikes for 2019 seen by the central bankers only three months ago. Trump said he was “right” to criticize the Fed last year about its steady interest rate hikes and balance sheet program, which shed $50 billion in Treasurys and mortgage-related assets from the central bank’s balance sheet each month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.84%   rose 216 points in trading Thursday. The 10-year Treasury yield TMUBMUSD10Y, -0.18% declined to a new 52-week low of 2.537%.

Trump says U.S. economy would have grown 4% without Fed tightening, MarketWatch, Mar 22